Just weeks into the new administration, the former President Bill Clinton’s administration decided to turn off the cameras for most of George Stephanopolous’ press briefings, just as the Trump administration has.

White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers explained in a March 1993 C-SPAN interview that the White House went with live, on-camera briefings to the press for a few weeks. But she said they stopped because the live briefings weren’t “really necessary.”