President Obama will again do a round to interviews today with local television stations, another bid by the White House to spur what is often more positive coverage than in sit-downs with national publications and networks.
The interviews will be with WSB Atlanta, WKYC Cleveland, WXYZ Detroit and WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia - and there is obviously a goal based on the description from the White House Press Office, which says the President will "discuss his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit, based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity."
The White House has done several rounds of these interviews in recent months, which allow Mr. Obama to more easily dominate the discussion than if he were doing an interview with one of the broadcast or cable TV networks.
In other words, the TV stations tend to emphasize the PR they get out of the interview, and don't spend that much time trying to pin the President to the wall on any particular issue.
But it doesn't always work out that way, as we saw just last week, when WFAA-TV in Dallas had a seven minute interview with the President, as a final remark to reporter Brad Watson made much more news than anything in the Q&A:
"Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?" a somewhat unhappy Mr. Obama said as the interview ended.
Usually, these interviews are mostly suck-ups - as I mentioned above, stations want good PR - they want to promote their "exclusive" interview with the President.
But that wasn't the case for WFAA, as Watson focused on legitimate questions of interest back in Texas, like why Houston didn't get a retired space shuttle and why Mr. Obama does not do well politically in the Lone Star State.
Some Democrats consider all four states on the table today to be in play in 2012 - Ohio, Michigan and Virginia were won by the Democrats last time, while Georgia was not.
Will any of the reporters/anchors who do these interviews try to make some news today? Or will they play nice while at the White House.
It's not an easy answer. If you aggravate the White House in this situation, you - and your station - might not get an interview offer anytime soon.
