Rumors are flying hot and heavy inside the Beltway that Trump's media team is considering significant, even revolutionary, changes in the White House briefing room.
Ordinarily, the front row of seats is reserved for the "major" media outlets, including ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, Reuters, and CNN. That lineup is as constant as spring rains and as holy as seniority in the College of Cardinals.
But there's a new sheriff in town, and suddenly, we're looking at a dry spring and overturning the sacred college. Trump aides are thinking of mixing things up to give other, less biased media organizations a shot.
The White House Correspondent's Association (WHCA) is responsible for the briefing room seating chart. To take that duty away from the WHCA is akin to a declaration of war on the legacy press. That may be exactly what Trump's media team is looking for.
Anyone who's ever watched a press briefing knows that the whole event is performance art; reporters talk for five minutes to show off their knowledge of events and then ask a question about minutiae that the press secretary is unable to answer. It's a game that doesn't impart any information or accomplish any sort of information exchange between the people and the president. It's all for show.
Giving reporters face time on TV is vital to their careers. A snarky question that catches the press secretary off guard, or better yet, elicits an angry retort, cements the reporter's reputation, and assures his continued employment.
The new press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, will apparently not have an office in the West Wing of the White House. This reflects a general downplaying of the traditional press operation. This isn't surprising given that Donald Trump, for better or worse, is his own press secretary.
“This administration values transparency and diversity in media,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to ensuring that the press room reflects the modern landscape of journalism.”
She foresees a briefing room makeup that features more independent and non-traditional organizations, including internet personalities that don’t have a print or TV presence.
Any change to the status quo would likely draw heavy criticism from the WHCA, which is powerful. For instance, during the COVID pandemic, the association decided just 14 reporters would populate the briefing room in order to adhere to social distancing guidelines. Of course, some of the outlets cut from the room were conservative.
That WHCA seating chart is only a suggestion that every presidential press team has followed — until now. That has raised the hackles of White House reporters who fear being left out in the cold.
“It would be a total mess,” an anonymous White House correspondent told the Hill. “I would expect people would probably boycott the briefings, though that would put certain outlets in a tough spot deciding if they want to go along with what the Trump people are trying to pull.”
Trump learned the hard way last time he was in the White House. Eventually, he did away altogether with the daily briefing, going more than 300 days without dispatching his press secretary to answer questions.
Before he bailed, the briefings had devolved into grandstanding sessions by peacocking reporters hoping to make a name on their biased bloviating. In addition to Mr. Avila’s theatrics, the hard-left reporter Yamiche Alcindor, of NBC News — who says it’s her job to use journalism to bend the “moral arc toward justice” — routinely berated Trump’s press liaisons. After a long hiatus, she is returning to cover Trump’s second term.
George H.W. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, thinks the press room reorganization should only be the start.
“It’s time to stop living in the 1980s. Change who sits in those seats and who gets the questions. Reorient the definition of news away from what the mainstream media thinks it is to what the media that’s more representative of this generation says it is,” he wrote. “And stop pretending the media is fair. They’re not. If Trump really wants to change Washington, he needs to change the status quo and unseat the mainstream media.”
If Trump's team can accomplish half of that agenda, it would be a job well done.
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