White House Correspondents’ Association President Jonathan Karl defended his colleagues after a clash between reporters and the White House over the seating arrangement in the briefing room.
Prior to Friday’s White House coronavirus task force briefing, the administration ordered CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, whose assigned seat is near the front of the room, to switch seats with pool reporter Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade, who was seated in the back. A White House official threatened to get the Secret Service involved, but the reporters did not budge, citing WHCA seating assignments.
Karl, who is a reporter for ABC News, explained the significance of the White House’s demand during a Sunday appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
“What happened here right before the briefing on Friday is the administration said that they were going to pick and choose who sits where in the briefing room,” he explained. “But, for as long as there have been seats in that briefing room, the White House Correspondents’ Association has had a say in who sits where. And the reason for that is you don’t want a reporter, Kaitlan Collins, for instance, to worry that if she asks a question that upsets the president that the president will retaliate by moving her to the back row or kicking her out of the briefing room.”
“That is a bedrock principle,” Karl concluded. “So, we will fight for that. And, you know, it’s a longstanding, and it’s been a practice that has worked.”
The White House pool reporter wrote to colleagues that he refused to switch seats at the behest of the unnamed “White House official” who claimed that “swapping wasn’t an option, and the Secret Service was involved.” President Trump declined to take questions from reporters that day.
A Secret Service representative told the Washington Post that their office was “not involved in this matter.”
The WHCA, which controls the seating rotation in the briefing room, and Trump have butted heads on more than one occasion since the beginning of the near daily White House coronavirus task force briefings.
After the WHCA shrunk the number of reporters allowed to attend the daily briefings in adherence to social distancing guidelines, the White House invited a correspondent from a network with decreased access.
One America News Network was taken off the rotation in the briefing room after White House correspondent Chanel Rion, continued to attend briefings on days that were not assigned to her. She would instead stand in the back of the room as a guest of the White House.
