President Trump has made a sensible suggestion that could help the White House press corps. Really. He suggested doing away with traditional daily press briefings. Trump reiterated the idea in an interview with Jeanine Pirro of Fox News. The journalistic world howled in outrage, but the idea deserves consideration.
Daily press briefings in the era of Trump are little more than journalistic theatre. Reporters battle White House spokesmen Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders in give and takes that seldom generate real news. The exercises feature White House correspondents trying to look tough against the forces of Trumpism. Reporters hope to ask the combative zinger that gets into the social media fast lane, raising profiles for themselves and their news organizations.
{mosads}The reality is that virtually nothing newsworthy comes from these wrestling encounters that the White House doesn’t want out there in the first place. In a sense, these journalistic watchdogs of the White House are nothing more than stenographers, waiting around for official statements and press handouts. Reporter hotshots who want real news should get out of the White House press room and do some actual enterprise reporting.
Take it from former ABC White House correspondent, Sam Donaldson, being assigned to hover over the White House denies a determined reporter little opportunity to do real, resourceful journalism. Donaldson covered the White House from 1977-89. Donaldson once chatted behind the scenes with other journalists before a 1978 Jimmy Carter presser in Kansas City. Donaldson bemoaned how journalists on the presidential beat are largely captives of the administration, chained to the White House. Such reporters are basically forced to report whatever agenda the president or his spokesmen blurt out on a given day. In a sense, for natural investigators, reporting the White House is one of the worst jobs in journalism. There has been no change in the situation since the Carter administration.
Predictably, the press exploded in righteous indignation to Trump’s thought about ending daily briefings. The new executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association said in a statement that Trump’s idea “poses yet another threat to the First Amendment.” The president of the White House Correspondents Association, Jeff Mason, said the potential loss of briefings “would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U.S. system, no political figure is above being questioned.”
Note to the press corps at the White House: the First Amendment is stronger than you must think and will remain in place whether there are press briefings or not. The First Amendment allows for the press to publish without government interference. It doesn’t guarantee access to Sean Spicer or any other administration official.
Further, the Trump administration has actually been pretty transparent. Trump administration officials have been all over broadcast and cable news outlets. Trump, himself, clearly likes the cameras and recently did an interview with NBC News, an organization he surely believes to be hostile. The president’s frequent tweets, for better or worse, provide a window of transparency to his thinking that is perhaps unprecedented in American history.
Imagine the journalistic benefits to the nation if the dozens of journalists who inhabit the White House press corps were free from covering routine briefings. They could, instead, be unleashed to cultivate sources and look for stories less centered on official White House pronouncements. That sounds more like journalism than stenography. The press should thank Trump for trying to nudge them out of their briefing room bunkers. It is time for a retooling of the emotional and hysterical press briefing formula that is currently failing the American public.
Jeffrey McCall (@Prof_McCall) is a professor of communication at DePauw University.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.