This is why Hillary Clinton doesn’t do press conferences

This issue has become an unhealthy obsession by the media.


This is why Hillary Clinton doesn’t do press conferences
http://qz.com/767056/this-is-why-hillary-clinton-doesnt-do-press-conferences/



Tim Fernholz
4 hours ago



Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters after meeting with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 14, 2016.
Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters in July 2016, but it's not a press conference. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Political press conferences are pointless, and mostly about media showboating.

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With social media, candidates don’t need to rely on reporters to convey their views. That in turn means that stories that break news are rarely produced by press conference. So why the ongoing obsession with press conferences? Could it have something to do with a need to justify the money being spent by mainstream news organizations to keep reporters on the campaign trail, versus the exclusive content they take away from that investment?

The sanctity of the press conference is now such that the gap between press conferences is now considered a story in and of itself. In particular, many in the media seem miffed at how many days it has been since Hillary Clinton’s “last” press conference, which took place in Iowa on Dec. 4. Apparently the political press doesn’t count Clinton’s Aug. 5 press availability at a National Association of Black Journalists meeting, perhaps because the “right reporters” weren’t there. (Ironically, the Aug. 5 event included an exchange regarding her reticence to hold press conferences.)

Since then, Clinton has done numerous one-on-one interviews with news outlets including the Washington Post, Vox, NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, among others. In those interviews, she’s been asked pointed questions about policy and politics and, yes, her e-mail server and her handling of classified information while at the US State Department.

And yet the fetishization over her scant appearances at press conferences continues. It’s enough to have made us want to go back to the Dec. 4 press conference and see what we were missing..............{not much at all}