During Tuesday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt objected to a question from Associated Press reporter Josh Boak while also announcing that she would skip the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner scheduled for April 26. She made this announcement during a podcast appearance with Sean Spicer, who served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary for the first six months of 2017.
“I will not be in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and that’s breaking news for ‘The Sean Spicer Show,’” Leavitt said, adding that the event “has truly become a monetized monopoly over the White House and the coverage of the president of the United States in America.”
“This is a group of journalists who’ve been covering the White House for decades,” she said on the podcast published Friday. “They started this organization because the presidents at the time were not doing enough press conferences. I don’t think we have that problem anymore under this president, so the priorities of the media have shifted, especially with this new digital age.”
Leavitt noted further that the WHCA has been an “exclusive group of journalists who cover this White House, they have not really welcomed other people, new media, independent journalists, with open arms, and so we thought it was time to expand the coverage and determine who gets to be part of that 13-person press pool, who gets to ask the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One.”
“Since we have started this new process of determining the daily rotation, so many new voices and outlets who have never been part of this small and privileged group of journalists have been able to access those very unique and privileged spaces and cover this presidency and that’s very important,” Leavitt added, further informing Spicer that the White House has received more than 15,000 applications for the new media seat in the press briefing room, Fox News reported.
In late February, the White House announced that it would determine which journalists join the 13-member pool covering President Trump in confined spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One. This marks a departure from the century-old practice where the White House Correspondents’ Association independently assigned press credentials when space was limited.
Eugene Daniels, president of the WHCA board and a Politico correspondent, argued that the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.” However, the White House defended the change as a modernization effort designed to broaden the press pool beyond just legacy media. The Trump administration announced that the three traditional wire services—the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters—would no longer have permanent spots and would instead rotate a single position within the 13-member group.