Reporters find fame after combative White House press briefings

The confrontation came just a week after Spicer had accused reporters covering the Trump administration of using the briefings, which are often carried live on camera, to get attention for themselves.

“There’s a lot of them that want to become YouTube stars and ask some snarky question that’s been asked eight times,” Spicer had said on the radio.

Sure enough, Brian Karem, who covers the White House for the Maryland-based Montgomery County Sentinel and has also been a columnist for Playboy, criticized Sanders for “inflaming everyone” in her broadsides against the news media. His value on the Internet and TV spiked immediately.

Before Karem’s moment with Sanders, his Twitter account had fewer than 300 followers. Within an hour of his now-notorious exchange, it had nearly 15,000. And as of Wednesday afternoon, his following had grown to more than 72,000.

He was quickly booked for interviews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” and “Morning Joe” and CNN’s “New Day.” He also wrote a first-person essay on what happened for Playboy.

On Wednesday afternoon, he tweeted that he was going on CNN and MSNBC, and he was on MSNBC Wednesday morning, when he said he “can’t take it anymore” when it comes to the Trump administration’s criticism of the press.

Karem is far from the first reporter to have seen doors open for him after standing out, for better or worse, during a White House press briefing.

CNN correspondent Jim Acosta has earned widespread attention on social media and in the news for aggressively questioning Spicer on the format of the briefings, which have been held more frequently off camera and for audio only.

Acosta’s clashes — or sometimes his ignored outbursts — with Spicer have caught the attention of Variety magazine and drawn criticism from conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity, who has accused Acosta of “trying to damage” President Trump.

On CNN Monday night, Acosta called on reporters to take “collective action” to fight back against the White House.

“Are we going to allow it to be the new normal that we’re not going to have the cameras on at the press briefings?” he asked.

Acosta famously shouted repeated questions at Spicer on Monday about why the White House wouldn’t allow cameras to capture the briefing. Since then, he has tweeted out several protest-style messages, including one asking if the White House decision not to hold on-camera briefings “feel[s] like America.”

On Wednesday, he tweeted out a picture of an off-camera briefing and said, “video of this has been banned by the USA.”

The briefing effect has even translated into cable news jobs for non-TV based reporters.

April Ryan, who covers the White House for American Urban Radio Networks, got a contract as a CNN contributor in April soon after sparring with Spicer during one of the briefings over questions about investigations into Russia’s election meddling.

During the back-and-forth, Spicer snapped at Ryan to “please stop shaking your head again.”

Though journalists and news executives often defend these confrontations as aggressive and necessary reporting to hold public officials accountable, the networks they work for seem to be aware of the business opportunities that the dramatic encounters bring, and some even use the encounters to brand themselves as tough-as-nails reporters in Washington.

MSNBC regularly runs a promotion for itself on its own programming featuring White House correspondent Hallie Jackson.

In the ad, she’s seen asking Spicer in the White House about the Russia investigation, “So bottom line, why would the president want Congress to investigate for information he already has?”

The slogan on MSNBC’s TV promotional spots is, “This is why you watch.”