Practice
In a news conference, one or more speakers may make a statement, which may be followed by questions from reporters. Sometimes only questioning occurs; sometimes there is a statement with no questions permitted.
A media event at which no statements are made, and no questions allowed, is called a photo opportunity. A government may wish to open their proceedings for the media to witness events, such as the passing of a piece of legislation from the government in parliament to the senate, via a media availability.
Television stations and networks especially value news conferences: because today's TV news programs air for hours at a time, or even continuously, assignment editors have a steady appetite for ever-larger quantities of footage.
News conferences are often held by politicians (such as the President of the United States); by sports teams; by celebrities or film studios; by commercial organizations to promote products; by attorneys to promote lawsuits; and by almost anyone who finds benefit in the free publicity afforded by media coverage. Some people, including many police chiefs, hold news conferences reluctantly in order to avoid dealing with reporters individually.
A news conference is often announced by sending an advisory or news release to assignment editors, preferably well in advance. Sometimes they are held spontaneously when several reporters gather around a newsmaker.
News conferences can be held just about anywhere, in settings as formal as the White House room set aside for the purpose to as informal as the street in front of a crime scene. Hotel conference rooms and courthouses are often used for news conferences.
Read more about this topic: News Conference
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”
—Marita Golden, educator, author. Saving Our Sons, p. 188, Doubleday (1995)
“Children also need opportunities to practice being less than perfect. They can afford to be ill tempered with us because it is our love that is most constant. This is the essence of unconditional love.... Our steadfast love provides a safe haven.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)