The White House Correspondents’ Association warned today that reports that the Trump administration plans to take control of the seating chart for the briefing room would be another effort to punish journalists over coverage it disfavors.
Axios reported that Trump’s team was considering taking over seating assignments in the cramped briefing room, a task that the WHCA has handled for years. Major networks, top wire services and print publications now have the front row seats and most often are the first reporters called upon during the press secretary’s regular briefings.
In a note to members today, the WHCA board wrote that “if the White House pushes forward, it will become even more clear that the administration is seeking to cynically seize control of the system through which the independent press organizes itself, so that it is easier to exact punishment on outlets over their coverage.”
“The reason the White House wants control of the briefing room is the same reason they took control of the pool: to exert pressure on journalists over coverage they disagree with,” the WHCA board wrote. This was explicit with The Associated Press, where the president and his staff plainly said their removal from covering presidential events was punishment for their style guide. And their motives here are explicit again.”
The WHCA also took issue with the idea that the administration was seeking to bring in new media outlets excluded from the WHCA.
“Our organization has always been and will always be open to professional outlets covering the White House, and we’ve evolved over more than a century to reflect the changes in our press corps,” the board wrote. “For instance, of the 296 news organization WHCA members, 45 are digital-only, 29 are ‘new media’ founded since 2000, and 29 are local U.S. outlets hailing from 18 different states.”
The WHCA noted that all-digital outlets added to the briefing room in recent years include Daily Caller, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Newsmax, Yahoo and The Grio.
“The most obvious end result of this reported plan is the punishment, not elevation, of journalists,” the WHCA board wrote. “It’s the same at the Pentagon, where the administration removed longstanding outlets whose coverage they disagreed with for other outlets that did not regularly cover the building.”
The Axios report also quoted a senior White House official that a WHCA member had “privately raised the possibility of changing the organization’s bylaws so the sitting White House press secretary, currently Karoline Leavitt, always serves as WHCA president.”
The WHCA board also called such a suggestion “ridiculous.”
“No board member or official representative of the WHCA has ever put forward such a non-starter suggestion,” the board said.
The WHCA board wrote, “Let’s be clear about why seats and who assigns them even matter. It’s simple: for the American people. For the public to get the information it needs to understand and make decisions about the most powerful office in the world, it needs news produced by experienced, professional journalists who ask tough questions and produce fair coverage.”
The WHCA backed the Associated Press after it was banned from Oval Office and other White House events, as well as Air Force One travel, because the news organization declined to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in its style guidance. The AP sued Trump administration officials, and a judge is considering their request for a temporary injunction.
The White House also has taken control of who is a member of the White House pool, the smaller group of a dozen or so journalists who cover presidential events where access is extremely limited. The WHCA handled those assignments for decades. Although networks and wire services (but not the AP) continue to be in the pool, so are Trump-supporting outlets like Real America’s Voice, often leading to the president getting extremely softball questions.
