Prearranged Question at Presidential Presser

The Huffington Post‘s Nico Pitney got the rare opportunity to be called on by President Obama at Tuesday’s press conference, rather than the other way around. As reported on Politico.com, Pitney told CBS Radio’s Mark Knoller the White House called him Tuesday morning to request that he be ready to ask a question.

And White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told Politico.com, “We did reach out to him prior to the press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the president took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian.”

The exchange, courtesy of Politico.com: Obama asked Pitney, “Nico, I know you and, all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran. I know there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”

Pitney’s question, sent online from someone in Iran, was, “Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad and, if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of the…of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.