Tough Questions and Non-Answers

Reporter's question: "Mr. President, are we going to war?"
Answer: "I think you know the answer to that."

   No, Mr. President, we don't know the answer to that. If we did, we wouldn't ask the question. Besides, our answers are not relevant. We get paid to ask the questions, not to know the answers.
   Journalism's job is to gather information and pass it on to readers and viewers, voters and the general public who then decide whether they approve of what government officials are doing in their name.
   When they begin their jobs, elected officials promise to honor the law and protect the Constitution. In general, their goal is to serve the public. In a democratic republic such as the United States of America, the goal has not (yet) been reversed, wherein the public serves government officials. That's called a dictatorship.
   The first step on the road to dictatorship is often control of the press, which means controlling the flow of information that the public receives about what the government is doing,
   The only way to know what the government is doing is to watch and to ask questions. That is the responsibility and duty of journalists, and that function is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
   Twisting questions around to avoid answering, or putting the responsibility for answering to reporters, is not the way the system is designed.
   Does America have an adversarial press? Absolutely, that's the way it should be, to keep elected officials honest and to make sure they continue to honor the public interest and not their own.
   We now have a situation in America where a president puts his own business, family and personal interests above those of the nation and its people.
   In the face of this, the press corps has intensified its probing and questioning into what the president says and does, and investigating all the potential repercussions of what he says and does.
   Judging from his responses, and his attacks and retaliations against those who ask tough questions, he either has a thin skin or he's hiding something, or both.
   If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, as former President Harry Truman put it. And if you're hiding something that is illegal, unconstitutional or both, all the more reason to get out of the kitchen.
   Before you get thrown out.