Politicians do it all the time: "Answer the question you wish you were asked, not the question you were actually asked." And reporters are pretty bad at taking this on.
The format of a typical press conference is designed to make it hard for a reporter to follow up when the politician dodges their question, because the politician usually moves on to the next reporter. If they ever get a chance to ask a follow-up, it's after the original context is long gone from anyone's working memory.
If reporters really wanted an answer to the question, the next reporter to be called on could just press for an answer to the previous question. But they don’t; in a press conference situation, the goal of reporters is to be seen, so their fame goes up, and to avoid antagonizing the host, since if they do, they won’t be invited to the next press conference.
Eh, that's part of it, but it's also that the next reporter already knew which question they wanted to ask. They probably didn't pay that much attention to the answer to the previous question because they were busy formulating their own question.
