The White House Correspondents’ Association has only itself to blame

The White House kicked a Huffington Post reporter off press pool duty and replaced him with an Axios reporter, and apparently this makes President Donald Trump basically the same as Vladimir Putin.

This is the story being told, at least, by the White House Correspondents’ Association and friends. If you struggle to identify with this reaction or wonder why it matters to you or your freedoms, you’re not alone. But the funny thing is that it drills down into exactly the problem American corporate media has in the first place — and why its rapidly diminishing influence won’t be restored any time soon.

Our power is influence, and it derives entirely from the public’s trust.

For decades, the WHCA has run who is allowed in and who is assigned to “pool duty” — the reporters and TV crews who follow the president and report to other members of the press corps who was in the room, what happened, when it happened, etc. These pool reporters also often get special access to ask the president and other White House officials questions.

Much of the work is essentially clerical, but that last bit is a big deal. The questions that reporters ask the president drive the news cycle for the day (or longer).

This week, the White House said it would be picking who was in the pool and added a new media slot (I took this one) as well as Newsmax’s veteran White House and investigative reporter, James Rosen. We worked hard (mainly the Axios reporter, with the others in support), got the story out, and, along with a smattering of more liberal and more conservative reporters, asked nearly an hour of questions on subjects ranging from the DOGE and Israeli hostages to Ukraine and tariffs.

The WHCA’s multiple statements said this was a problem, that we were friendlier to the president, implying that we could not be trusted. The jilted Huffington Post reporter (who, to his credit, calmed down a good deal when he realized the pool report came through just fine) wrote that the White House’s decision was another example of the “nation careening toward autocracy.”

The New York Times’ White House correspondent admitted his comparison went a bit far, but still: “Mr. Trump’s Washington is bringing back memories of Mr. Putin’s Moscow in the early days.” The piece was titled, “In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-like chill takes hold.”

But who counts as a trustworthy media source and who does not is a silly thing for the press association to decide. We might as well start with HuffPo, which dismissed as conspiracy theories the allegations that COVID is a “man-made virus” and that “President [Joe Biden] is senile.” Meanwhile, the outlet claims Trump is a Russian asset, possibly even cultivated by the KGB for decades. Trump, HuffPo’s White House correspondent wrote just last weekend, has turned “the party of [Ronald] Reagan” into “the party of Putin.”

Granted, I’ve written and said some mean things about presidents I disagreed with. Their invitations for me to come interview them in the Cabinet Room must have been lost in the mail. It would take some gall for me to pretend that alone makes them autocrats.

This is where the corporate media has lost its way: an incredible, unbearable sense of entitlement. We like to think of ourselves as “the fourth estate" — a centuries-old English term that in America has come to be understood as the fourth branch of government after the executive, legislative, and judicial. We have no police, no power to declare war, no sergeant at arms, and no judge’s gavel. Our power is influence, and it derives entirely from the public’s trust. Our protections derive entirely from the First Amendment, which allows us to publish our opinions free from reprisal.

Notice that while the things that guard our rights are in the U.S. Constitution, our power is not. We are not owed any trust by the American people — nor do our constitutional protections from infringement mean the president owes us access to his Cabinet meetings. Much of the corporate press’ coverage over the past few decades, but particularly over the past 10 years, squandered a public trust that was already in decline.

If you want trust, maybe show an openness to the American people and toleration for political dissent. If you want trust, maybe practice a little nonpartisanship, or at least less hero worship for the Democratic Party. If you want trust, maybe don’t turn your dinner into a narcissistic, left-wing love fest. If you want to be taken seriously with safeguarding our rights, maybe don’t dress like a villain from “The Hunger Games.” And if that line offends you, maybe you've lost touch with reality.

Nothing is yet set in stone. The White House may well decide it’s taken on too much when it confronts the organizational lift required to coordinate daily press coverage around the world (and some of the smaller outlets confront the high costs required to travel with the press pool). Maybe this will end in negotiation between the administration and the association, where reporters have to confront the reality that they can’t expect privileged access for rabid partisans and the White House confronts its own realities.

Remember: The politicians need us as well. That just happens to include reporters like me.

Columbia Journalism Review: Will others dive into the White House press pool?

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