The Real Fake News

Good question! Do you know the answer? If not, is it something you'd like to know if your house was in the path of the fire? (By the way, here's the fake briefer's answer: "If the governor had asked for a major declaration, that would have talked about individual assistance and public assistance at greater levels. And at this point the governor has not asked for that. And so as this fire continues to evolve, as the implications are made known, the governor may reconsider and ask for additional assistance from the federal government." Thanks for the clear, succinct info, make-believe briefer!)

"What lessons learned from Katrina have been applied?"

Really good question! You can be sure a real reporter would have asked that one, since everyone has been comparing the way the administration is handling the fires to its Katrina response. The answer was pretty good too: "…if you take a look at Katrina, where there really was no leaning forward, really, there really was not a fabric of federal partners where there wasn't good, smooth communication between the governor and the administrator of FEMA, the governor and the president. To see all the federal partners linked together, pre-scripting mission assignments, having contracts in place, following a game plan—we didn't do any of those kinds of things in Katrina." The fake briefer goes on to ladle heaps of self-serving praise on FEMA and the great job it's doing, but that would have happened at a real press conference.

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"

Okay, now that one was just greedy. No reporter would toss an embarrassing softball like that at a real press conference.

The reason the fake press conference seemed so real is that real press conferences are often so fake. A lot of the time they are time-wasters. Briefers come into the room with an officially approved set of facts to dispense, and the most talented ones don't stray beyond the script no matter how hard the reporters try to trip them up. And reporters, competing for scoops, often don't ask the briefers questions they really want the answers to, because the room is full of other reporters.