WH reporters offer rare praise after Grisham runs interference with Kim Jong Un goons

A clip of Grisham’s Sunday scuffle played on TVs in White House workspaces on Monday morning as journalists who were there relayed the experience to colleagues, recalling that North Korean guards hadn’t screened the group that Grisham dramatically escorted.

Impressed White House journalists asked one another throughout the day, “Have you seen the video of Stephanie?” One veteran correspondent said it would significantly boost her standing among reporters.

Olivier Knox, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, expressed gratitude, saying in a statement, “I’m sorry for any bumps or bruises, but very grateful to Stephanie for her intervention on behalf of the U.S. press corps.”

Although some journalists described Grisham as “bruised,” the extent of her injuries, if any, were unclear as the White House declined to comment on the record Monday, in an apparent effort to downplay the story.

Grisham, who served two years as Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, took over as President Trump’s press secretary as he traveled to Japan and Korea over the weekend, culminating in the confrontation in the Inter-Korean House of Freedom.

The clash happened shortly after Trump shook hands with Kim Jong Un and became the first sitting president to walk across the border into North Korea. Grisham ensured journalists could observe a subsequent pool spray by Trump and Kim, before the men held private talks.

“Go! Go!” Grisham shouted as journalists ran past her, through the gap in security she had created.

Past press secretaries have won the esteem of journalists by defending them on trips overseas, though some reports noted clashes were essentially to ensure a photo-op. In 2010, President Barack Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs refused to remove his foot from a door jam to allow U.S. reporters to cover an event with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Obama smiled, but gave no remarks. At a chaotic event in 2009, Gibbs defended reporters from Chinese officials, barking, “Don’t push my guys.”

Whatever thaw Grisham created in the icy relations between the White House press corps and the building it covers may be momentary at best.

“This is hardly the first time there has been some pushing and shoving” with foreign security, said Charles Bierbauer, a past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and a professor at the University of South Carolina.

Bierbauer said although such encounters can seem significant, “goodwill has a short shelf life.”

“[The] press corps will appreciate that Grisham was trying to help them. But they will also gauge that if the melee got more attention than the photo op it was meant to capture, someone — need we say who — is unlikely to be pleased,” Bierbauer said.

Under Grisham’s predecessor, tensions with reporters increased as regular White House press briefings gradually ceased. Although they were functionally replaced by less frequent, impromptu White House driveway gaggles, it’s unclear how interactions will evolve under Grisham.

Some press freedom groups responded cautiously to Grisham’s heroics, while knocking her boss’s actions.

Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said “it was nice that Ms. Grisham stood up for reporters while in Korea,” but that “it would be nicer if the Trump administration halted its record-breaking number of leak prosecutions, its almost-daily disparagement of reporters, and its attempt to criminalize national security journalism through its dangerous prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.”

Michael King, the president of the National Press Photographers Association, offered a similar take.

“I acknowledge Ms. Grisham for doing what I think her job should be: to ensure that the free press of a democratic nation can witness and report on the American presidency and foreign affairs without interference,” King said. “But her actions do not at all absolve the Trump administration’s relentless anti-journalism rhetoric.”

King said he was particularly upset by Trump’s remarks in Japan over the weekend. “On the very anniversary of a day when an American newsroom in Maryland was attacked and five journalists were murdered, Mr. Trump joked about ‘getting rid of’ journalists with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia where journalists have been jailed and killed. The remark was tone-deaf, and an ultimate disrespect to a public institution specifically protected by the First Amendment, which he has sworn to faithfully preserve, protect and defend,” King said.

In an apparent reflection of caution, many other journalism advocacy groups either declined to comment on Grisham’s actions or said they were insufficiently qualified to do so. Many of the groups have spent Trump’s presidency objecting to his use of the terms “fake news” and “enemies of the people” to describe reporters.

The Committee to Protect Journalists was “still looking … into this incident for additional info, so wouldn’t be well-placed to comment on it at this time,” a spokesman said.