White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

Time and People Cancel Their White House Correspondents’ Pre-Party

By

Time and People Magazines will not hold their annual cocktail reception the night before the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year.

“Time Inc. will not be hosting its annual Time/People party at the St. Regis during this year’s WHCA weekend.  As usual, Time will be participating in the WHCA Dinner,” a spokeswoman said.

The reception has been recognized as a star-studded event during the Correspondents’ Association dinner weekend.

The magazines’ decision follows other organizations’ decisions to cancel festivities surrounding the Dinner.  The New Yorker and Vanity Fair announced in January they opted not to hold their respective parties this year.  Bloomberg followed in announcing theirs cancelled in February.

President Trump announced on Twitter that he would not attend the annual dinner, held on April 29th at the Washington Hilton.  The last time a president did not attend the dinner was in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt.  Reagan did send a video message.

Major Media Banned from Friday’s White House Q&A

By

James Brady Press Briefing Room, 2007. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s Friday question-and-answer session will occur without major news outlets such as Politico, CNN, the New York Times, BuzzFeed and the Los Angeles Times.

Instead of the standard on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Spicer instead held an off-camera “gaggle” inside his West Wing office.  Attendees were welcomed to the session by invitation only.

Some major news organizations were also let in, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters and Bloomberg.

Jeff Mason, the White House Correspondents’ Association president, blasted the situation.

“The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House.  We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not.  The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

The White House has not commented on the situation.

White House Chief Strategist Continues Chiding the Media

By

Photo Courtesy of Haddad MediaAppearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside of Washington, DC, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon continued the administration’s attack on the media as the “opposition party.”

According to transcripts of his speech, Bannon said that:

“If you look at the opposition party, how they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition, how they portray the administration, it’s always wrong. If you remember, the campaign, by the media’s description, was the most chaotic, the most disorganized, most unprofessional, had no idea what they were doing. And then you saw [the media] all crying and weeping”

Bannon is the former head of Breitbart News and has long embraced the position of vocal media antagonist.

President Trump Asks April Ryan, a Veteran White House Correspondent Who Is African American, to Set Up Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

By

Kevin Liles, Amy Ryan, Hilary Rosen. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

During yesterday’s Q&A with the media, President Donald J. Trump responded to a question from April Ryan, long-time White House correspondent and author of At Mama’s Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White by asking her to arrange a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Late in a news conference that lasted over an hour, Ryan – who is African American – asked the president about a campaign pledge to revitalize American urban centers, often referred to by Trump as “inner-cities.”

The president’s response started with him stating that her question was “very professional and very good,” then followed up by Trump stating he received “a much higher percentage of the African American vote than a lot of people thought” due to his focus on this issue.

Ryan then followed up by asking the president if he was going to include the CBC” the Congressional Black Caucus, an organization of African-American Members of Congress, in discussions.

“I’ll tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?” the president responded.

“No,” Ryan replied, saying she was “just a reporter.”

Trump continued, saying “set up the meeting. Let’s go, set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the black caucus. I think it’s great. The Congressional Black Caucus.”

CBC spokeswoman Kamara Jones said the CBC sent the president a letter on January 19 inviting him to address the caucus, but has not yet received a response.  In a reply on Twitter, the CBC stated:

In a follow-up interview on CNN, Ryan said she would be happy to report on a meeting between the president and the CBC. “But as far as facilitating that meeting or convening that meeting, that is not my place. Every White House has someone to deal with this kind of meeting or this kind of bringing together of people. It’s up to that person in this White House to do that.”

Ryan has been the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks since January 1997 and is also the author of best-selling My Up Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Prefers Conservative News Outlets

By

James Brady Press Briefing Room, 2007. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

An analysis by the New York Times suggests that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has preferred questions from journalists representing non-traditional and center-right news outlets over mainstream journalists in his daily press briefings.

Historically, administrations have prioritized questions from journalists sitting in the first two rows of the briefing room, normally assigned to reporters representing mainstream media such as NPR, Associated Press, Fox News and Reuters. Spicer has avoided this tradition and has focused his attention more on “non-mainstream” journalists elsewhere in the briefing room.

In his first Q&A session on the job, Spicer granted the first question to a New York Post journalist who had written a book critical of the Clintons. His second question came from the conservative website LifeZette, founded by radio personality Laura Ingraham (who was also considered by Trump for the press secretary position). None of his first five questions in his first briefing were asked from the front two rows of mainstream outlets.  He regularly gives priority during briefings to journalists from conservative-leaning titles such as Breitbart, Newsmax and One America News Network.

In comparison, former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ first five questions in the initial 2009 Obama administration press briefing went to journalists representing mainstream outlets from the first two rows in the seating chart: Associated Press, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News and CNN.

Speaking with Sean Hannity in January, Spicer defended his decision:

“There are voices and issues that the mainstream media sometimes don’t capture, and it’s important for those issues to get as much prominence as some of the mainstream ones.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association – not the administration — has doled out seating assignments in the Press Room since 1981. Additional reporters with no seat assignment stand in the aisles of the room or sit in empty seats.

Major Garrett: If the Press Skips the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, We’d Prove Trump’s Point

By

 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay / Geralt.

Major Garrett, CBS Chief White House Correspondent, wrote an op ed in the Post Friday to reaffirm his commitment to the Correspondents’ Association and their annual dinner.  He urged the media and celebs to appear in order to celebrate the important work of covering the White House and use the dinner to shine a spotlight on educating young journalists, something we need now more than ever.

The Correspondents’ Association sponsors over $100,000 in scholarships awarded at the annual dinner.  In 2016, the association began a mentoring program pairing students with members of the WHCA for career advice and counsel.

Garrett argues that journalists that regularly attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but won’t this year because of President Trump, are applying a double-standard.

[N]o self-respecting White House reporter has ever been a president’s prom date, and the dinner isn’t a date at all. It’s a cease-fire with bad wine and crowded tables. And if we, the media, stand Trump up at the proverbial dance because we’re pining for another “date,” we make it that much easier for him to say we’re playing favorites. And in this case, at least, he’d be right.

He makes the point that several media outlets have ignored the dinner for several years.  Dean Baquet of The New York Times said in 2011 that his organization has stopped attending because “it just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable.”

However, for those outlets that regularly have attended, avoiding this year’s dinner because of President Trump is hypocritical and sends the wrong message.  “If the dinner were canceled because (gasp!) a president made a few snide remarks about White House reporters, that act of self-regard would say that the First Amendment is negotiable and that emotional well-being takes precedence over professional responsibilities. For myself and for my colleagues on the beat, let me say unequivocally: never.”

Instead, Garrett concludes, media outlets should address the perceived challenges and threats of a new administration hostile to the press by renewing their commitment to the WHCA dinner and the First Amendment.

Garret is a former White House Correspondents’ Association board member.

Who Will Headline the Correspondents Dinner?

By

Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

Over the weekend, Late Night host Stephen Colbert suggested he would “love” to again headline the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April. “I’d love to do it. I mean, when else are you going to stand next to the President and make jokes? But no one will ever ask again.”

Past hosts include Larry Wilmore, Rich Little, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel. Jay Leno currently holds the record for emceeing the event four times: 1987, 2000, 2004 and 2010.

The challenge for this year’s host will be balancing his or her role as entertainment with a presidential administration constantly criticizing the media. Dave Berg, producer of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” summed it up:

“In the past, the big challenge for comedians was, ‘How could I be funnier than President Obama? In most years, his comedy trumped the comedians. This year goes way beyond that. On the one hand, you could be accused of sitting there and skewering Trump and he is captive [at the dinner]. On the other hand, you could be accused of being too soft.”

Director Patrick Gavin, who produced the 2015 documentary Nerd Prom: Inside Washington’s Wildest Week, said this should be a tough decision for any comedian. “If they’re too tough on Trump, they run the risk of violating the ‘singe, but not burn’ principle that guides the dinner… And if they’re too soft… they will suffer the wrath of half of the country that view taking it to Trump as nothing short of a civic requirement.”

Jeff Mason of Reuters, in his role as the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, oversees choosing the entertainer. He said recently he has no timeframe currently on when someone will be announced.

President Trump has not yet accepted an invitation to attend the Dinner. The last president to miss was Ronald Reagan in 1981 as he recovered from an assassination attempt.

Stephen Colbert Offers to Host White House Correspondents’ Dinner

By

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

Over the weekend, Late Night host Stephen Colbert said he would be interested in hosting this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April.

“I’d love to do it,” Colbert said at an 80’s dance party fundraiser for the Montclair Film Festival. “I mean, when else are you going to stand next to the President and make jokes?”

Colbert was the host of the Dinner in 2006, where he roasted then-President George W. Bush. “Everyone who wasn’t in that room loved [the speech],” he reminisced.

The late-night talk show host also discussed how difficult it has been to keep up with current events as host of Late Night since the Inauguration.

“The speed at which the news changes with President Trump is extraordinary,” Colbert said. “We tape the show at 5:30 p.m., but sometimes we have to change the show at 5 p.m. — after rehearsal, when everything is done — we are writing a whole new first act based around something that he has said or done in the last half hour. The balls are coming over the plate so fast with him and I think that’s intentional. [The Trump administration] want[s] their actions to be almost un-discussable. They want to swamp the real media.”

Jeff Mason of Reuters, in his role as the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, oversees choosing the entertainer. He said recently he has no timeframe currently on when someone will be announced.

Trump Administration Boycotts CNN

By

Photo courtesy of Pixabay / Geralt.

CNN will no longer receive officials from the Trump Administration for on-air interviews and commentary, according to a report on Politico.

President Donald Trump has criticized CNN as “fake news” frequently since Election Day.

An anonymous White House official said “we’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.” The official acknowledged the ban is not intended to be permanent.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied the administration was freezing out CNN, noting that he continues to take questions from the network’s journalists during regular daily briefings. He also defended the administration’s decision not to send spokespeople to the network for on-air coverage.

“I’m not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right,” Spicer said at an event at George Washington University on Monday.