A FARCE NAMED PRESS CONFERENCE
As I watched the President’s speech last night, here is what came into my mind immediately. That’s the same farce as it always was in East Germany.
The Press Corps had to deposit their questions before the event. Then the political advisers choose which question would even be accepted. If they did not get enough acceptable questions, they just went back to the media and said “choose a new question.” Then they produced the answers the General Secretary of the communist party had to give and looked for the perfect timing. What this meant was that the answer was given in such a way that it did not really answer the question and second, there was no time to re-ask.
Whomever thought that it was a good idea to by surprisingly out of the protocol, and just jump in with an unapproved question, was thrown out and most likely lost the accreditation as a journalist. That secured that the reporting from inside East Germany – even though it was a little critical of the system – was never really a frontal assault on the communistic dictatorship.