NBC Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker, on President Obama's press conferences:

“Every time a president holds a press conference there is potential for news to be made, as he did, probably to his regret, with his comments on the Gates case,” Whitaker says. Still, he says, “we would feel better” if White House officials “were approaching us with the sense that they had something new to say, rather than that they just wanted to continue a dialogue with the American people. There are other ways of continuing that dialogue than taking up an hour of prime time.”

The nerve of the White House, wanting to “continue a dialogue with the American people”!

If NBC doesn't want to air presidential press conferences, they can alway refuse to do so, and deal with the consequences. Some friendly advice, though: if they chose to go that route, they might want to come up with a better explanation than saying that they don't want to participate in a “dialogue with the American people.”

UPDATE: Greg Sargent spells it out: “for the networks to gripe that the president is making himself available for questioningtoo often is just an absurd complaint, and hardly seems like something a self-described news organization should be moaning about.”

Right. Note that it wasn't an NBC bean-counter complaining about having to carry the press conferences; it was the head of NBC's Washington Bureau -- a journalist.