Even in the pre-Trump era, I had reservations about the annual black-tie celebration in Washington that some have dubbed “the nerd prom” but is more formally known as the White House correspondents’ dinner.
Was it really a wise idea, I wondered, for Washington DC journalists and their bosses to chum around with the very government officials that they were supposed to be covering? Shouldn’t reporters maintain some critical distance? What about the “optics” of this much-publicized event (and the week of gala festivities surrounding it) that made journalists appear frivolous about holding the government accountable to the public? Given the American public’s rock-bottom trust in traditional media, hasn’t this annual, televised display worsened that problem?
During the first Trump administration, I even wrote a column for the Washington Post urging the dinner’s organizers to “stick a fork in it.” By that, I meant to end the tradition and find another way to accomplish their stated purpose of fundraising for journalism and celebrating the first amendment.
But these days, the dinner has become even more inadvisable.
On Saturday, Donald Trump – with all his vicious antipathy toward the profession he has called the “enemy of the people” – will attend. He’ll no doubt be applauded; surely many in the crowd will stand to recognize him.
Some media companies or executives are going further, inviting blatantly anti-press officials, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, to be guests at their tables, or (in the case of David Ellison, CEO of CBS News’s parent company) even holding a separate dinner to “honor” Trump. Paramount, the parent of CBS News, is said to have invited Brendan Carr to their table; he is the FCC chair who has made a mockery of what should be his independent and nonpartisan role; appointed by Trump, he has come down clearly on the side of the president’s allies in consequential decisions – including those involving Paramount’s mergers with other media corporations.
The juxtaposition is bizarre.
“It’s akin to a fire department inviting arsonists to a gathering aimed at celebrating firefighting,” wrote Oliver Darcy in his media newsletter, Status.
One journalists’ organization has attempted to balance the scales, and make their position clear, by urging attendees to wear pocket squares touting the first amendment. Nice try, but I don’t think that it makes much of a dent. Meanwhile, an ad hoc group of prominent veteran journalists is urging the organizers to include a strong speech in defense of the first amendment that would cite Trump’s attacks on the press. It’s a good idea.
The New York Times has a tradition for more than a decade of not attending the event, except to cover it. Huffington Post, which has long attended, pulled out this week, as its editor refused to “share laughs with a ruler who holds such a dreadful record”. The Guardian is hosting several press-freedom advocates at its table, in addition to a few reporters.
Indeed, there’s often a newsworthy aspect to the dinner, which takes place at the Washington Hilton in its cavernous ballroom.
At the 2011 dinner, for example, Barack Obama memorably mocked Trump, who had been sowing unjustified doubt about the then president’s American citizenship. Trump, who was considering a presidential run, reportedly sat stone-faced in the audience.
In 2018, the comic Michelle Wolf ripped everyone, calling Ivanka Trump “about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons”, and quipping that Trump’s then press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders “burns facts, and then uses the ash to create a perfect smokey eye”. She had some sharp words for journalists and their clickbait motivations, too.
The association later apologized for Wolf’s message because it wasn’t in keeping with the intended “unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners”.
This year, there will be no comedy routine to disrupt that message. But there will be Donald Trump and those aides and allies who have consistently disparaged and attacked the very principles that the dinner intends to celebrate.
Maybe we’ll see an out-of-character version of Trump that acknowledges the role of the press in American society. Maybe the dinner will be perfectly civil and tons of fun.
But that can’t take away the stain of what’s already happened: Trump’s frivolous lawsuits against news organizations, his constant charges of “fake news”, his insults to reporters (especially women and journalists of color), his administration’s efforts to keep Pentagon reporters from doing their jobs without government interference, his favorable treatment to media outlets that pull their punches for him.
Celebrating the first amendment and raising money for journalism causes is, of course, a fine idea. There must be a better way than to rub elbows in a glitzy ballroom with those who despise journalists and their constitutionally protected mission.