The first big achievement of the White House Correspondents Association was in getting the president it covered to stop doing press conferences. One doubts the group could do the same today, even for 24 hours.
The association was born out of a moment very much like our own. Woodrow Wilson took office in 1913 with the intention of blowing up the established order in Washington and immediately set to work. You’d even recognize the issues of the day: tariffs, conflict with Mexico, backlash against immigrants, and concerns about a regional conflict in Eastern Europe turning into a wider war.
Wilson and Donald Trump are separated by a century of history and much more. The 28th president, the pinched and reclusive former professor; the 45th (and 47th), the chatterbox reality TV star. But on many key points they are aligned, sharing an almost limitless definition of presidential authority, the willingness to use federal powers to reward friends and punish critics, tolerance for violent factions who supported them, and the reversal of minority hiring programs for the federal government. The two even have a political base in common: white Southerners and working-class voters in the north.
We could find much in common between Trump, Wilson, and any of the other presidents who wanted to wield power with a heavy hand. The self-dealing of Lyndon Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt’s contempt for judicial review, the martial flourishes of Richard Nixon, and Franklin Roosevelt’s attacks on the separation of powers could all find analogs in the Wilson and Trump administrations. But on the question of the press, perhaps no two presidents since John Adams share as much in common.
Earlier this week, the White House took control of who is allowed to cover the president in smaller settings. Prior to Monday, the rotation of outlets assigned to report on the president when he travels or speaks to the press in small gatherings at the White House, a 13-person “pool,” was determined by the members of the press corps itself. Through the WHCA, journalists determined the order in which outlets would take turns providing coverage that would be shared freely with all the members of the organization. This system was devised to evenly distribute the benefits of White House coverage—access, visibility, and the chance to shape stories through the questions asked and images selected—as well as the accompanying liabilities. The costs of staffing a 24-hour post are enormous, as are the huge outlays associated with covering trips, especially abroad.
Now, the White House says that it will determine the rotation by which these advantages and disadvantages will be doled out. The first rule of the new rotation: Wire services that do not use Gulf of America on first reference are not allowed to join. Except for Bloomberg. They’re okay, but not the Associated Press, which is being excluded for “lying” about the name of the body of water that lies between Florida and Mexico. And now it seems Reuters has also run afoul of the stylistic requirements of the administration. So a wire service can join, but only the one and apparently only for as long as the press office approves of its geographic terminology.
That frees up spots, which will go to “new media” outlets, which seems like another way of saying those places deemed more sympathetic to the administration, such as Axios, Newsmax, and Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media. So what’s the press corps to do?
The Associated Press is suing to have its access restored, and while a judge seemed favorably disposed to the idea that it was bad for the government to punish news organizations for the words they use, access to the president is hardly the right of every reporter. Other than that, it’s been a lot of strongly worded letters and grave intonations from First Amendment scholars until the next escalation: The association will no longer distribute the reports provided by the White House-selected pool.
But there is something else the members of the WHCA could do: stop cooperating with the administration, drop out of the pool, and give up their own access. The White House could have friendly outlets there to lovingly record every thumbs up and Air Force One and Oval Office bull session while the other outlets stayed in the press room—at least until the administration gets around to kicking them out of there, too.
Boycotting the new government-run pool is not a simple proposition. Even the harshest opponent of the administration’s policy might point out that it is better to have some adversarial journalists in these settings rather than none at all. Having left-leaning or aspirationally fair reporters in place makes it harder for the White House to lie or elide. After all, if reporters can make concessions to gain access to repressive regimes abroad, is accepting favorable status from a hostile administration here at home—provided the work produced is free from censorship—such a serious transgression?
Then there’s the business side of things. Nothing drives traffic and viewership, left and right, like coverage of the wild happenings inside the Trump administration. If outlets refused privileged access in the name of journalistic independence, they would also be refusing scoops and the very insider status that leads to revenue in the atomized, hypercompetitive media market.
Complicating matters further is the “vibe shift,” in which outlets like the Washington Post are trying to win back Republican and moderate customers after years of arraying themselves as combatants with Trump in a struggle for truth. Refusing an invitation to go into the Oval Office would have a real “democracy dies in darkness” aroma about it, certainly not in keeping with the hip, new shrug-emoji energy these outlets are trying to put forward.
It would take a lot of steady, quiet leadership to pull the plug on the new pool system, and, alas for the White House Correspondents Association, that is not where it finds itself just now. Who they have is their president, Eugene Daniels, who just this week announced he was leaving his gig at Politico to join MSNBC’s weekend lineup after earning fame as Politico’s “Kamala Harris expert.”
What Daniels has brought to the presidency is perhaps best signified by his choice of Amber Ruffin to be the after-dinner speaker at the association’s reliably tedious and self-congratulatory annual awards dinner. A regular on Seth Myers’ NBC show, Ruffin’s jokes are supposed to make Democrats feel transgressive and bold by listening to things they already agree with said in a contemptuous way.
The celebrity-seeking dinner may be the most visible thing the association does, but it is far from the most important.
The White House press pool as we knew it started in 1937 (aside one episode in 1881 after President James Garfield was shot), when reporters banded together to find a way to cover the Roosevelt White House more affordably. An ad hoc agreement between reporters evolved into the system administered by the association that, until this week, governed the getting of access and the giving of reports to competitors. But the pool wasn’t the point of the association’s creation.
Back to 1913. Wilson was furious over the unfavorable coverage his new administration was getting from some outlets, particularly Washington’s Evening Star. While the Washington Post was then a reliable friend of Wilson (and his admirers in the Ku Klux Klan), the Star was Republican-leaning and quickly made itself a nuisance to the new administration.
The Star was home to Bill “Fatty” Price, a rotund Georgian who was probably the first true White House correspondent. He grew famous in the 1890s for buttonholing White House visitors leaving the executive mansion and prizing scoops out of what had been previously considered a boring beat.
In 1897, when newspaperman William McKinley took office, Price and a growing gang of beat reporters finally won regular access to the building. It was easier for the administration to know where the reporters were than having them ambushing people outside the gates. Access in exchange for courtesy. But that did not fit with Wilson’s idea of an aloof, kingly presidency.
Wilson’s idea of a press conference was one in which he would tell reporters what to think about things and they would repeat them. Price and Co. thought it was supposed to be a give-and-take. Annoyed by the impertinence of the media, Wilson declared that he would cease regular press conferences altogether.
The response from reporters was three-fold. First, they had to organize, forming the new association and installing Price as their first president. Then they had to clean house, kicking out the scammers and riff-raff that had attached themselves to the herd and making sure everyone who remained was an accredited member of a legitimate news organization. So, finally, they could effectively collude against Wilson’s efforts.
In the purest sense, they failed. Presented with a united front, Wilson deigned to continue doing press conferences for a year or so, but with reduced frequency until, in 1915, he stopped doing them altogether—save one pre-election session in 1916. Reporters wanted more access, and ended up getting none. But Wilson wanted to control who covered him and what they reported, and he didn’t get that either.
When the United States entered the world war in 1917, though, Wilson could have something even better. With the arrival of new wartime censorship laws, the president was protected from a great deal of media criticism. But it wasn’t enough to tell outlets what not to say, so he devised a way to show news organizations the light.
Wilson created a new executive agency, the Committee on Public Information, and tapped former newsman turned Democratic operative George Creel to lead it. What followed was a mix of censorship and propaganda probably unequaled in American history. And Creel and his team made sure that “loyal” American publications knew what was safe to publish.
Every day, the government published the Official Bulletin, a collection of pieces commissioned by Creel, and sometimes Wilson himself, that editors across the country could use as templates for their own coverage. Wilson didn’t need Fatty Price and his fellow malcontents mucking up the message when he could finally have a direct line to the American people.
Too bad for Wilson that by the time the war was ending in 1919, Americans and the progressive journalists like Ida Tarbell who had joined the president’s ministry of truth had grown weary of propaganda. Wilson tried to enforce press restrictions on the peace process that followed the armistice that year, but it was too late. He watched his bid to create the League of Nations go down in flames as a news media newly freed from wartime restrictions delighted in sticking it to him.
Price and the correspondents’ association had lost in the short term, but when the wheel turned, they were ready to take Wilson on. Then they got his successor, Warren Harding, another former newspaperman, to resume the practice of regular press conferences with a still-aggressive but now professionalized press corps.
Trump has a lot more avenues for propaganda at his disposal than Wilson ever dreamed of. Like Wilson, Trump has plenty of sycophantic media outlets eager to provide uncritical coverage—and his top adviser is the owner of the nation’s most politically influential social media site. Elon Musk can do much of the work Creel did: Punishing reporters who deviate from the administration’s line and pushing out the preferred narratives to be followed by “loyal” reporters. It lacks the power of direct federal authority, but other Trump officials seem eager to provide it.
Price’s vocational descendants face a similar challenge to his. If they refuse to comply with the directives of the administration, they will lose access. But if they comply, what will that access be worth?
Musk and the Proud Boys, Creel and the Klan. Yellow journalists and progressive sycophants, #resistance fashion plates and MAGA bro podcasters. The parties, proportions, and personalities have changed, but the problems confronting a free press more than a century later look very much the same.
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.
With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere.