LONDON — Is President Obama trying to muzzle his press corps?

The standard form during “joint press availabilities” — bureaucratic lingo for press conferences where leaders from two different countries stand next to each other and take questions from reporters — is that each official’s press corps gets the same number of questions.

Well, during the joint press availability on Wednesday with Mr. Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the ornate British foreign office near 10 Downing Street, Mr. Brown called on the U.K. press corps for four whole questions. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama only called on the White House press corps, which schlepped (granted, on a really nice United 777 charter) across the Atlantic to scrupulously chronicle his first overseas trip as president, thrice.

Mr. Obama even tried to cut off the press conference after six questions had been asked—most dealing with the growing rift between the United States and the rest of the world over how to fix the global economy. “All right?” he asked, in an “O.K.-we’re-done-I’m-outta-here” way.

Mr. Brown was having none of that. As Mr. Obama made to leave, Mr. Brown exercised his host’s privilege and called on George Pascoe-Watson, from a tabloid, The Sun. He may have regretted that though, because Mr. Pascoe-Watson asked Mr. Obama if he had any advice that would help Mr. Brown, whose poll numbers are in the basement, to win re-election.

Responding in a fashion that would make Miss America proud, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Brown needed to stay true to himself, so “you can wake up and look at yourself in the mirror. And that,” he concluded, “is the kind of integrity that Gordon Brown has shown in the past and will continue to show in the future.”

At this point would have been the perfect opportunity for Mr. Obama to then level the playing field and call on a fourth White House reporter — like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used to do when her foreign counterparts went rogue and snuck in extras for their press corps.

Alas, he did not take it.