Politics

Obama to hold press conference Nov. 14

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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President Barack Obama will take questions from the press on Wednesday, Nov. 14.

Obama has avoided the press conferences since mid-June, when he took questions at an international conference in Mexico.

The president has conducted numerous one-on-one meetings with carefully selected local and national reporters during the run-up to Election Day.

Few of those events yielded difficult questions for the president, although in October a Colorado reporter aggressively quizzed him about this conduct during the Sept. 11 jihadi attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (RELATED VIDEO: Local news anchor grills Obama on Libya, green spending)

The event will be held in the White House’s large East Room.

If the event follows previous practice, White House officials will choose which reporters will be invited to ask questions. The practice pressures reporters to maintain good relations with White House officials.

On a few occasions, Obama has held conferences in which Obama himself decides which reporters to ask. Obama also occasionally responds to questions shouted by reporters.

ABC’s White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, and his counterpart at Fox News, Ed Henry, pushed during Friday’s press briefing for the president to schedule a question-and-answer event.

At the end of Friday’s briefing, Carney announced that the president would indeed take questions next week.

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Neil Munro