It’s a journalist’s right, as well as her duty, to ask the hard questions

“ON the eve of his recent sojourn in Europe, President Bush had an unpleasant run-in with a species of creature he had not previously encountered often — a journalist.”

So writes John Nichols, associate editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Carole Coleman's Prime Time interview continues to reverberate, but most of the comment in the United States is favourable to her.

"Coleman was neither impolite nor inappropriate," Nichols continued. "She was merely treating Bush as European and Canadian journalists do prominent political players."

The Americans rejected monarchy, but George W Bush seems to think that reporters should treat him with regal deference. And he calls himself a Republican!

The Washington Post initially reported that Bush "lost his temper when he was contradicted" by the Irish journalist. That was rubbish, as is quite clear from the video of the interview on the newspaper's website. The president might have become mildly perturbed as Carole interrupted his flow with another question on seven occasions, but there was no question of losing his temper.

He pleaded to be allowed finish without interruption on five occasions but he actually interrupted her questions on three occasions himself, which she graciously accepted as part of a normal interview.

"Please. Please. Please, for a minute, okay," the president said. "It'll be better if you let me finish my answers, and then you can follow up, if you don't mind."

Throughout the interview, both of them were courteous. Coleman, RTÉ's Washington Correspondent, had submitted what she was going to ask in advance. "They had my questions for about three days," she explained.

"They knew I was going to ask tough questions and I think he was prepared for that. There were a few stages at which I had to move him along for reasons of timing and he's not used to being moved along by the American media. Perhaps they're a bit more deferential."

It was to be a 10-minute interview. The first time she interrupted him was after he was already speaking for a minute in answering her second question. If he did not like the style of her interview, he was within his rights to tell her. Each time he asked to be allowed to answer the question in his own way, he was able to do so without further interruption.

After the interview, the White House protested to the Irish Embassy and first lady Laura Bush obviously endorsed the protest by cancelling an interview that she had agreed to give Carole Coleman in Ireland. How dare a US President seek to interfere with our press freedom by complaining to the government about an RTÉ interview! Does the White House really think the president needs the protection of the Irish Government against Carole Coleman?

It's pathetic! This is the guy that is running for re-election as the one to take on Bin Laden!

Of course, a previous Fianna Fáil Government could be said to have invited such a protest by its behaviour. Jack Lynch fired the whole RTÉ Authority over a Kevin O'Kelly interview in November 1972.

"I have just sacked the RTÉ Authority," Lynch told Ulick O'Connor that night. "I suppose you don't think much of that."

"I certainly don't," Ulick replied.

"It doesn't say much for your views on freedom of speech. You'll rue that."

Lynch grinned. "F*** them," he said, and walked off.

The Bush administration seems to be under similar pressure these days.

While presiding in the Senate last week, vice president Dick Cheney lost his cool when Senator Patrick J Leahyof Vermont questioned him about the involvement of his former company, Halliburton, in Iraq. "F*** yourself," the vice president snapped.

Who does he think he is Jack Lynch?

A cabinet minister here was heard to utter the f-word in the Dáil not so long ago, but it is not the kind of language that American politicians use in public, especially those who seek to monopolise the high moral ground. But then it was a Republican president whose private language gave rise to the immortal phrase "expletive deleted".

Too many American reporters are deferential when it come to questioning the president, but they have always had some journalists with the courage of their convictions.

One such journalist was Sarah McClendon, the long-time dean of the White House press corps and bane of presidents for half a century.

Sarah was a real battle-axe who shouted at presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. "She didn't ask questions," Clinton said, "she demanded answers."

Eisenhower used to get so annoyed at her bellowing at him that the veins could be seen pulsing in his head. It was she who first asked him during the lead-in to the 1960 presidential election what important decisions vice-president Nixon had participated in.

"I can't think of any," Eisenhower replied. When another reporter returned to the question, he gave his oft-quoted response, "Give me a week and I'll think of something."

This certainly did little to help Nixon, when he campaigned on the basis of his supposed experience after eight years as vice-president. President John F Kennedy once got so furious at McClendon that he vowed never to answer another of her questions. But he did. She had a booming, gravelly voice and a threatening presence that they could not ignore. She was from Texas, and her fellow Texan Dan Rather noted "she could be a pain, but that was part of what made her effective".

Lyndon Johnson could not abide her. "I can run the country or take questions from Sarah McClendon, but not both," he snapped.

"If you didn't write something good about him, he was mad about it," she recalled. "He was mad at me all the time. He got me fired by at least four papers."

In 1974, when she questioned President Nixon about benefits for certain veterans, he replied that it had been taken care of.

"No," she insisted, "You're just misinformed." She was right, and Nixon admitted as much at a subsequent press conference.

In 1982, McClendon reproached president Ronald Reagan for suppressing details of a report on discrimination against women. Poor Ronnie "didn't know much about government", she noted. When she had a hip replaced, he had the good grace to visit her in hospital. But the first question that she asked him at the next press conference after she got out of hospital was: "Why don't we have better healthcare for the elderly?"

"Don't be afraid to ask the president a question," Sarah advised a young reporter not long before her death in 2002. "It's his job to answer your questions, and your responsibility to ask them."

Carole Coleman went to the White House with the responsibility of asking questions and she had the guts to do so. It was a pity that the Irish embassy did not have the gumption to stand up for press freedom by telling the White House that Government interference with RTÉ over interviews is a thing of the past.