White House correspondent and CNN contributor April Ryan has canceled a scheduled appearance at a ticketed fundraising event for 2020 Democratic candidate South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. She claims she did not know she had agreed to do a fundraiser.
Impressive investigative journalism skills she has.
The Washington Examiner’s Alana Goodman was the first to report that Ryan agreed to serve as a moderator this weekend for a “grassroots event featuring senior advisers Jess O’Connell and Brand Neal.”
Goodman adds, “Tickets to the event run as high as $500 and include $15 tickets for students and $18.35 tickets for veterans.”
When asked for comment, CNN pointed to a tweet Ryan wrote Friday wherein the credentialed White House correspondent blamed the Buttigieg campaign for her failure to perform due diligence.
“I agreed to interview Pete Buttigieg this weekend — the campaign was not clear that the venue would be a fundraiser,” she said. “We’ll be rescheduling the interview to a more appropriate time/place. Looking forward to asking him the tough questions the AURN audience wants answers to.”
Ryan, who is also the D.C. bureau chief of the American Urban Radio Networks, canceled her appearance shortly after inquiries from Washington Examiner.
I agreed to interview Pete Buttigieg this weekend – the campaign was not clear that the venue would be a fundraiser. We’ll be rescheduling the interview to a more appropriate time/place. Looking forward to asking him the tough questions the AURN audience wants answers to.
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) October 18, 2019
A representative for the White House Correspondents’ Association, of which Ryan is a member, told the Washington Examiner he does not think her planned appearance represented an ethics violation, saying, “We don’t have any policy on that. We don’t regulate the work of our members.”
I suppose there are worse things for political journalism than Ryan participating in a ticketed fundraiser for a 2020 Democratic candidate. It is probably better than her staff roughing up reporters for disobeying her mandate that no one is allowed to record her without her explicit permission.
It is probably better than her wasting everyone’s time at White House press briefings with illuminating and provoking questions such as, “Has the president at any time thought about stepping down before or now?”
It may even be better than Ryan creating mini-news cycles around herself by lobbing allegations of racism at public figures based on her own uncharitable paraphrasing of their public statements. It is certainly better than her going on national television to falsely accuse the White House press secretary of challenging her to a physical confrontation.
In fact, Buttigieg drawing Ryan away from newsrooms and the White House would have been one of the best things to happen to political journalism since Trump’s candidacy capitulated her to #Resistance fame. It is our loss that she canceled.
