Reporter Olivier Knox, who will take over as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in July, said in the aftermath of the controversial WHCA dinner this weekend that he will be discussing plans for next year’s dinner with the association’s members, and that he wants the annual event to be “boring” under his tenure.
In an interview Monday with the Washington Examiner, Knox, who covers the White House for SiriusXM radio, said discussions about next year’s dinner will be a higher priority when he takes over as head of the association. Many believe the comedian at this year’s dinner, Michelle Wolf, went too far in some of her jokes about Trump administration officials and abortion, and that acts over the last few years have all slanted far to the left.
“I’d always planned to have a lot of conversations with the [association] members about a range of issues when I’m president,” he said. “This [Wolf’s performance] emphasizes the need for doing that. I’ve said for a long time my aspirations for the dinner is to have it be boring.”
Knox said he wanted the “center of gravity” of the event to move to recognizing the First Amendment and “not on the president, not on the comic and not on the celebrities in the audience.”
He said discussions about next year’s dinner are “definitely on the agenda” and that “it’s moved up a couple rungs on my priority list.”
The WHCA represents news organizations and reporters who cover the White House. Much of its work includes advocating for greater access to each administration and providing scholarships to young journalists.
The annual dinner is meant to celebrate the First Amendment and much of the WHCA’s funding comes from selling seats and tables at the dinner each year, though some journalists have called for dramatically changing the format of the dinner or abolishing it altogether.
Critics, however, say that the dinner creates an appearance of conflicts of interests between journalists and the government officials they cover.
Wolf, the comedian at Saturday’s dinner, made several jokes about White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, including one about her resembling a homely character in the show “A Handmaid’s Tale.”
