Vice President Joe Biden was in Brazil Thursday conducting official business, but without a White House reporter there to cover it.
The White House Correspondents’ Association was unable to secure one of its member reporters to accompany Biden for the trip, according to WHCA President Christi Parsons.
“We weren’t able to field a pooler, unfortunately,” Parsons told the Washington Examiner.
Biden was in Brazil for the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, the country’s president. The trip by Biden was seen as an attempt by President Obama to restore strained relations that resulted from revelations that the U.S. had spied on Rousseff.
Typically, a small number of reporters and news photographers would accompany Biden as he travels on official business abroad. A print reporter designated by the WHCA would then write up Biden’s activity and send them in dispatches to an extensive list of other reporters and media professionals. These reports have been delivered regularly from Obama’s holiday stay in Hawaii over the past several days. There are no such reports from Biden’s visit to Brazil.
There are, however, photos from Biden’s visit from the Associated Press and Reuters. Fox News Latino also has its own report about the visit.
“In keeping with our policies and precedent, the vice president’s office reached out to us to ask for a print pool reporter,” said WHCA’s pool committee in a statement to the Examiner. “We, in turn, flagged it for our potential poolers. We were regrettably unable to fill that slot.”
Biden’s visit to Brazil on New Year’s Day was likely a factor in the lack of reporters available to cover the trip.
