Obama tries to steer conversation in interviews with reporters

President Obama has limited his number of White House press conferences, which pose the peril of unexpected and uncomfortable questions, but a string of interviews Monday with local reporters has raised eyebrows over suggestions the president had steered the conversation to preferred topics.

The local media outlets that interviewed Obama say there were no limits to the questions they could ask, though the president's media strategy underscores how he and other elected officials can control their message by focusing their exchanges with journalists.

Within hours Monday of the president’s first appearance in the White House briefing room since March, he did separate interviews with TV reporters from Jacksonville, Fla., Norfolk, Va., and San Diego. All of them were from Republican-leaning military towns facing huge defense cuts if Congress fails to reach a budget deal.

They all asked about the automatic cuts -- known as sequestration -- and apparently that was by design.

“Mr. President, I know we were asked to talk about sequestration today,” Donna Deegan, the reporter from FCN-TV Jacksonville, said before posing an opening question about senior health care. Deegan later said, “Let’s talk a little bit about sequestration, because I know that’s why you invited us here.”

The interviews were reported first by the blog site White House Dossier.

Mike Lopez, a new director at  WVEC-TV in Norfolk, acknowledged Tuesday that the White House called to say it wanted to talk about sequestration, but he made clear the station did not agree to an interview based on a set of limited questions.

“There were no ground rules," Lopez said in a follow-up email. “We were invited to the White House to talk to the president about sequestration. We knew this. Since this is America, we were also allowed to ask the president about anything else we wanted to discuss.”

GOP strategist Elliott Curson said Tuesday such arrangements are nothing new and a good bet for a politician.

“He’s not going to get a hardball question,” said Curson, a media consultant on Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. “And those reporters are not going to embarrass a president. They want to say, ‘Hey, I’ve talked to the president.'"

Under sequestration, Congress would make automatic, across-the-board cuts to defense and non-defense item if it fails to reach a budget agreement.

The reporter for the NBC-TV affiliate in San Diego acknowledges being “invited as San Diego’s military reporter" and begins with a question about sequestration. And the president says at one point, “The only thing standing in the way right now is insistence on the part of some Republicans in Congress that they would rather provide tax cuts for … millionaires and billionaires.”

News director Greg Dawson also acknowledged the White House called to say the president wanted to talk about the issue but “knew we also wanted to talk about other things.”

"There were not ground rules,” he said.