[cheshire_cat]

Tilo Jung[0] has bee annoying the government spokes persons with uncomfortable questions for years. I read that some other journalists are uncomfortable with his questions since they fear that the government might decide to just not show up anymore (everybody is aware that the Bundespressekonferenz is a quite unique arrangement) but they still let him show up and ask questions. He does really valuable work imo and publishes all Bundespressekonferenzen on his youtube channel[1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilo_Jung [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1WDP5EiipMQ__C4Cg6aow

[johannes1234321]

> I read that some other journalists are uncomfortable with his questions since they fear that the government might decide to just not show up anymore

The thing in his early days was that he asked and "demanded" a proper answer. But often times the politicians don't want to answer to the question stated. Now you can waste everybody's time and ask again and again, without getting an answer (which is useful if you stream the event) or accept that there won't be an answer and move to the next topic (which is good if you want to write an article)

But meanwhile Jung doesn't play that game that much anymore, but asks good and precise questions and more often then leaves it there.

[rendall]

I'd love to see more follow up questions of the sort "Excellent answer, if I had asked about X (e.g. who to blame for high taxes), but instead, my question was Y (what are your plans regarding tax policy?)".

It seems that Scottish interviewer Andrew Neil has a reputation for this kind of implacable questioning. Any others?

[johannes1234321]

That can work in a 1:1 setting, where you are trying to pin down somebody.

In that described setting here, you have journalists who want to write an article about current topics. In the article they can write "they avoided answering XYZ" and given limited time it is more worthwhile to switch topics. Repeating a non-answer doesn't make the article longer.

In the 1:1 setting the way they try to weasel out and avoid answering can be educational to the audience and can narrow down the topic a bit.

[GekkePrutser]

Yeah I wonder how dumb journalists are sometimes for accepting evasive answers from politicians.

If they don't want to say something they should just say that. I totally agree with this guy tbh.