

    THOMAS: Let me make another point here. A partially, a technical point.

    But one of the ways he filibusters or runs out the clock, is that they changed the way they used the microphones at this news conferences, there used to be shotgun mics, I mean the mic would pick up any question anywhere in the room. Now they've got this - this thing that they just pass down the aisle, it looks like some kind of high school deal and then you don't get the follow-up. So, two or three follow-up questions that you never heard - you only heard the president's answers. What's with that?

    SCOTT: Eric Ostermeier, to go to your point, Judy, at the University of Minnesota put together a piece called "Fox Still Shunned" at Obama press conferences, "A smart politics analysis, he writes, finds that ABC reporters have been called on the most frequently during Barack Obama's solo news conferences, followed by CBS, the Associated Press and NBC. With Fox News coming in at a distant ninth in less than half of the rate of the top outlets, less than 40 percent of the press conferences overall. Why does the president not like to call on us?

    POWERS: Because he doesn't want to be embarrassed, really. Because when

    he's asked a question, the same way, you know, when Ed Henry asks questions in the - Jay Carney, inevitably Jay Carney ends up looking stupid because they don't - he doesn't know how to answer the question, he's used to pushing people around and you know, that it will be tenacious, they'll get asked about something he doesn't want to get asked about and he wants softballs.

    SCOTT: After that - after that press conference, sorry to interrupt you, but after that press conferences The Washington Post gave Mr. Obama a rare upside down Pinocchio ...


    THOMAS: Flip-flopping.

    PINKERTON: Major league flip-flop, right ...

    SCOTT: Right.

    PINKERTON: And that was a brave voice, and that's again, if you have to deal with those kind of criticisms either from the liberal mainstream media then of course the answers are going to be seven or eight minutes long, because you just don't want to get very many questions, and yet, as Fred Barnes wrote in The Weekly Standard, you know, you can get a four year press honeymoon and now it looks like it's been an eight year press honeymoon.

    SCOTT: And we've got the inauguration coming on Monday, Judy is rolling her eyes even as I phrase the question. How is that going to be covered?

    Can you see the headlines now?

    MILLER: I think we're going to have more of the same. I mean I think what disturbs some of us is the double standard, is the - if this president does something, if he kills people from 300 feet with a drone, if he draws up lists of Americans who can be killed, it's fine, nobody says anything. If George Bush did it, the world would be coming to an end.

    PINKERTON: Absolutely, waterboarding was evil, killing them is OK.

    SCOTT: (inaudible) funding of your presidential inauguration. Next on NEWS WATCH, do big public apologies really make a difference?






    SCOTT: Ending decades of deception and denial Lance Armstrong coming clean to Oprah Winfrey admitting the doping using banned performance enhancers to win competitions at all costs. His public admission following other high profile admissions, Tiger Woods going in front of the cameras, telling the world about his sex addiction. He returned to golf still making millions, NFL quarterback Michael Vick, publicly apologizing for his mistreatment of dogs. Vick returned to play in the NFL after some jail time also making millions. Actor turned the California governor are airing out his dirty laundry admitting to infidelity and fathering a child with one of his workers, he is back making movies now and hoping to make millions. And who can forget Bill Clinton apologizing for misleading the American people admitting to his encounters with Monica Lewinsky. And now, propping up the Democratic Party making lots of appearances and making millions. So what about Lance Armstrong? Does it - is it all rosie for him now?

    PINKERTON: No, I mean he sort of proved he was a sociopath thing, so that I looked up cheating in the dictionary and I wasn't cheating. I mean exactly cheating - but hats off to Oprah, she clearly has responded her own criticism being too soft, that was a good tough interview, boom, boom boom, yes or no. Yes or no. No, exactly what Armstrong wasn't expecting and he clearly wasn't ready.

    THOMAS: Well, I think Lance Armstrong has exceeded his confess by date.

    By then it was so obvious what he had done and he'd be like Jodie Foster coming out on the Golden Globes and acknowledging she is a lesbian, oh wait, that is what happened.


    SCOTT: So, who does this benefit more, though, Oprah or Lance?

    MILLER: Oprah.

    PINKERTON: Yeah.


    PINKERTON: Or Lance.

    SCOTT: All right. He's done - Gore Vidal said we're the United States of amnesia, Americans are a forgiving type. Are we going to forgive and forget?

    POWERS: I don't - you know, I don't know I feel like part of the problem with Lance Armstrong is just the vehement denials and accusations against other people and for some reason I think that that crosses the line a little bit with people.

    PINKERTON: And lots of lawsuits. All the people he defamed are going to come back at him with lawsuits. He's got $100 million, that is a deep pocket for somebody.

    MILLER: And the interview was just weird. This is what he said, of a critic's wife, oh, I called her a liar but I didn't call her fat.

    PINKERTON: Let's go on to the next clip.

    THOMAS: Oprah loved that one.


    SCOTT: And he talked about that generation as though it was some long ago era.