Margaret Sullivan, columnist for the Washington Post and former public editor for the New York Times, said journalists shouldn’t attend this year’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
In a column published Sunday afternoon, Sullivan said the dinner is already “embarrassing and ridiculous” for reporters, but the Trump administration presents new issues for the group.
“For journalists to make nice with an administration that has trashed and blacklisted them conjures the abused wife who sends the cops packing, puts a little extra makeup over her bruises and hopes things will get better soon,” she wrote.
Sullivan said the dinner should be canceled.
The dinner, hosted each year in Washington by the White House Correspondents’ Association, is usually attended by a mix of high-ranking government officials, well-known journalists and the president.
In recent years, the week of the event has been populated with dozens of parties thrown by news outlets and other businesses promoting their brands.
Some within the media have said the dinner projects an image of an unseemly coziness between reporters and the government officials they’re supposed to hold accountable.
Vanity Fair and New Yorker magazines both said last week that they would not host the corresponding parties they usually do this year.
