Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus drew criticism from the White House Correspondents’ Association Wednesday after suggesting the Obama administration was the first to assign reporters certain seats in the West Wing briefing room.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association notes with concern the comments President-elect Donal Trump’s chief of staff-designate Reince Priebus made on today’s Hugh Hewitt program,” WHCA President Jeff Mason wrote in an email to reporters. “There was a notable factual inaccuracy in Mr. Priebus’ remarks.”
In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Priebus had said the Trump transition operation is considering making changes to the way reporters will interact with members of the next administration and the kind of access they will have to the president-elect.
“The traditions, while some of them are great, I think it’s time to revisit a lot of these things that have been done in the White House,” he told Hewitt, later adding that “the first front row assigned seat issue, as I understand it, started in the Obama administration.”
Priebus said that in reporters covering the Bush administration “just took a seat” in the James S. Brady briefing room, although “there were a couple of people that have had reserved spots.”
Priebus’ remarks could suggest that the coveted front and second-row seating assignments of major news organizations, many of which President-Elect Trump views as biased, could be imperiled.
“News organizations have had assigned seats in the briefing room since those seats were installed in 1981,” Mason noted. “That was not an Obama-era innovation as Mr. Priebus suggested.”
Instead, Mason said the WHCA has been responsible for assigning seats in the briefing room for at least two decades “at the request of both Republican and Democratic administrations” who wished to avoid the “potential appearance of playing favorites if they assigned seats themselves.”
Mason said he and his colleagues are eager to meet with those involved in the Trump administration “to address questions and concerns on both sides about exactly this sort of issue.”
