Foreign policy reporters ripped into the State Department on Wednesday for allowing a single reporter from a conservative media outlet fly with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Asia, after initially telling reporters there was no room on the plane for any press.
Erin McPike, a White House reporter for the Independent Journal Review, flew with Tillerson, which led to several minutes of complaints from the foreign policy press who found out about the decision from press reports, not the State Department.
Reporters asked acting spokesman Mark Toner several questions about whether the State Department values reporters who have expertise in the issues Tillerson is working on, and why he would choose to dodge the regular corps of reporters who follow those issues. State also rejected the idea of taking a single reporter as a pool correspondent.
But Toner struggled to explain how the decision was made.
“It was determined, and many of you… found out, that the one seat that was available, it was decided to take a journalist who was not … from an outlet that doesn’t normally travel with the secretary as part of an effort to include a broader representation of U.S. media,” he said.
“I would never want to imply in any way, shape or form that we don’t respect and acknowledge … the level of expertise, the commitment of the individuals in this room,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. “In this specific trip and instance, it was decided to make an outside the box, if I could put it that way, decision to bring somebody in who doesn’t necessarily cover the State Department.”
But Toner’s suggestion that Tillerson was re-evaluating State Department media traditions in order to bring “new perspectives” into the process didn’t satisfy the standing State Department press corps, who previously protested their exclusion from his plane. They suggested the State Department was seeking “a friendly audience” to cover a foreign policy trip dedicated to resolving a potential crisis on the Korean peninsula.
“To choose an organization that is not part of the pool and is an obviously a conservative website, or whatever you want to call it — doesn’t that narrow the message and not broaden it?” a reporter asked Toner.
“I think it sends a message that we’re willing to look at new paradigms with our approach to the media, again, while at the same time ensuring that traditional media has full access and nontraditional media,” Toner replied.
“This is a little bit different way of doing it,” Toner said. “I’m not saying this is going to be the norm going forward.”
