42. How badly does the White House Correspondents’ Association need to be reformed? The WHCA is essentially a team of reporters from various media outlets who cover the White House most closely and team together to coordinate their common interests (this weekend’s dinner was hosted by the current president, who is from the L.A. Times). According to its website, the WHCA “represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues … addresses access to the chief executive, coverage arrangements, work space arrangements, logistics and costs for press travel to accompany a president on the road.”
In other words, anything wrong with the WHCA likely translates to something systemically wrong with coverage and accountability of the White House. The first reading below sums up how that’s been going: “Evidence suggests that the relationship between the president and the press is more distant than it has been in a half century.”
So, how in need of reform is the WHCA and its processes? Consider:
- Subjective factors (“part tenure, part audience and part commitment to the White House beat,” according to USA Today), relationships and connections determine which media outlets get access
- Even though the platforms used to consume news has evolved, the front row of the White House press room is still all cable networks and wires
- The White House press corps has lost much of its influence and leverage, and often does not make good use of whatever access it still has
- While barriers to entry for journalism have dropped (anyone can post online), barriers to access to the White House press corps (or Capitol) still remain, and legacy institutions hold the advantage
If the White House press corps’ effective coverage and accountability of the administration has waned, to what extent is that their fault, as opposed to the fault of the administration? What are each sides’ obligations? If you were the president of the WHCA, what would you do differently? How do other countries handle this issue, and how does the U.S. compare?
What if you were editor of POLITICO? How would you cover the White House differently, and how would the WHCA fit into your strategy? If you’re feeling extra creative, how does solving this challenge translate to revenue and general success of a media company?
By Columbia Journalism Review (Susan Milligan)
March/April 2015
… is a gulf between the press and the head of state it’s charged with covering. [Press conference] answers are long, leaving time for just a few questions from a press corps with already-limited access to the president. Actual news is almost never made, since the White House has new tools allowing it to release and manage news on its own schedule and terms — its online news report is but one of these.
The press, meanwhile, shows itself to be a willing hostage to the modern demands for a click-worthy story and a tweetable quote. At press conferences, the overwhelming tendency is to ask about the day’s headline or to look for the “gotcha” question, instead of addressing long-term accountability issues. Frequently, one journalist after the next will ask the same question, as they did during the post-election news conference. Reporters ask questions not to get information, but to get a reaction. And even with that strategy, they rarely succeed.
An exhaustive study of every official exchange Obama had with the press corps in 2014, supplemented by a review of daily press briefings and interviews with more than a dozen current and former correspondents and White House press secretaries, reveals a White House determined to conceal its workings from the press, and by extension, the public. The research, paid for by a fund established in memory of former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, makes clear that the media most responsible for covering the president and his inner sanctum are given little insight into how decisions are made or who influences those decisions, whether from inside or outside the White House.
Evidence suggests that the relationship between the president and the press is more distant than it has been in a half century.
By POLITICO (Patrick Gavin)
April 23, 2015
…
6.) Audit the White House Correspondents’ Association. I don’t think anyone involved with the WHCA intentionally misbehaves, but since they’re now a $500,000-a-year non-profit (not exactly chump change), it’s time for them to act like it. I asked Ken Berger, the CEO of the non-profit watchdog Charity Navigator, to review the Association’s finances for the first time. He came back with a tough rebuke of how the Association does business. His criticisms include the fact that there are no independent audits done, nor is there an audit committee. There are no conflict of interest policies in place. Most disturbing is the fact that almost half of the Association’s annual outlays go to its executive director, a ratio that Berger called disturbing. In many years, the executive director gets paid more than gets doled out in scholarships.
…
How the seating chart of the White House press room has changed, in 1 cool graphic
By Chris Cillizza (Washington Post)
March 25, 2015
…It’s pretty cool, right? A few observations:
1. The first three rows remain largely unchanged. …
2. Once you get beyond those first three rows — there are seven total rows with seven seats in each — chaos reigns with tons of movement and subtractions/additions. …
…
What does it all tell us? Mostly stuff we already know. That the influence of the big wheels in media — wire services, TV networks and the big traditional newspapers — doesn’t change much.
Here’s the new White House briefing room seating chart
By USA Today (Gregory Korte)
March 25, 2015
There are hundreds — maybe thousands — of reporters in Washington who cover the White House from time to time, but only 49 seats in the White House briefing room. And those seats are only slightly less coveted than the chair in the Oval Office just a few doors down the hall.
The White House Correspondents’ Association recently made adjustments to the briefing seating chart, promoting some news organizations and instituting seat-sharing arrangements for others. The calculus that goes into the assignments is part tenure, part audience and part commitment to the White House beat. News organizations that don’t show up every day will find another reporter sitting in its seat; miss enough briefings and the seat may be lost permanently.
Why does it matter? Although the White House Press Office fields questions from reporters around the clock, the daily news briefing can be the only opportunity to ask on-camera, on-the-record questions on the news of the day.
And geography is destiny: Where a reporter sits can determine how likely he or she is to ask a question. Major television networks and wire services occupy the front row and usually get to ask multiple questions every day. By tradition, the Associated Press — which sits front-row center — goes first.
After that, each row back makes a reporter less likely to get called on.
