If you only watched the news reports of the president's news conference and not the news conference itself, you might think that the only topic of discussion was Seth Rogan vs. Kim Jung Un. However, through out the news conference, President Obama laid out a pretty convincing case for his presidency so far. Plus he also spent about 6 minutes making a pretty convincing case against the Keystone Pipeline. While the highlight of the news conference according to Chuck Todd was the fact that only female reporters got to ask the questions. Who edits the news?
There has been plenty of coverage of Mitch McConnell's pledge to make passage of the proposed Keystone Pipeline his first and foremost priority in the new senate. The snippets of his remarks that are aired in the media often contain his uncontested version of the pipeline "facts."
When asked how he intends to proceed on the senate's push for the pipeline, Obama answered with something the press interestingly, routinely ignores, the truth about what Keystone actually will mean for America.
When do you hear in the press that the pipeline is only for oil produced in Canada, not the U.S. and benefits Canadian Oil companies by giving them a cheaper mode of transportation for THEIR oil? Since the oil will be sold into the world oil market it will do little or nothing to affect U.S. gas prices.
How often have you heard or read in the (I hate this term) "mainstream" media that the U.S. jobs that the pipeline will create are probably only a couple of thousand temporary construction jobs? Mr. Obama made it clear that the senate has said nothing about working to pass infra structure improvements in the U.S. that could potentially create hundreds of thousands of permanent jobs.
The President was not as firm in his statements about the pipeline's affect on climate change, but he did bring up the issue. Climate change is never mentioned by the proponents of the pipeline in their hyping of their cause.
Obama did not directly answer if and how he intends to combat McConnell and his pledge to fulfill his obligation to campaign contributors from Keystone. He stated that the courts in Nebraska are still hearing a case from residents who see the potential dangers to their environment. He implied that his strategy is one of "wait and see."
In the meantime he laid of the real facts about the pipeline for the gathered press. But if you weren't there or didn't have time to catch the full news conference, then you only know that the real battle is between the president of Sony and the president of the United States. Again I ask, "Who edits the news?"