Donald Trump has already disrupted both major political parties, the media and conventional wisdom, and now, members of the Washington press corps may have reason to expect that their lives will change once Trump takes office in January.
For years, the White House Correspondents’ Association, a pro-government transparency and access group, mostly made up of national mainstream journalists, has been tasked with assigning who gets to sit where in the White House briefing room.
The big TV networks (CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox and CNN) are given the prime front row and the national newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal) are seated just behind.
But as former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served in the Bush (43) administration, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, there’s no guarantee that’s how a Trump administration will do things, which could mean major changes starting next year.
“The White House press secretary used to decide who got what seats, but this authority was given to the White House Correspondents Association in the middle of the George W. Bush administration,” he wrote. “Nothing prohibits the incoming administration from taking it back. The valuable West Wing real estate occupied by the White House press corps isn’t the property of the press. It belongs to the U.S. government.”
Citing studies that show the dramatic erosion of the public’s trust in the press, Fleischer said it’s possible Trump’s administration could take a radical approach to how a White House works with the press.
“If he decides to go around the press entirely, abolish the daily briefing, give seats to different reporters, appoint a combative press secretary, or not take a press pool with him to dinner, the reason he’ll be able to get away with it is because the mainstream media lost the trust of the American people,” he said.
In an interview Monday with the Washington Examiner, Fleischer said it may be the right time for some changes to the way the White House conducts its briefings.
“Given the way the American people have changed their consumption of media, I think it’s worth thinking through whether or not to rotate who occupies the seats,” he said. “And to broaden it. It should continue to include the White House press corps but you could rotate days. You could, for example, have one day business press, another day foreign policy press, another day conservative press, another day liberal press. I think what’s important is that it be open broadly. It would be reflective of many.”
But if Trump’s posture toward the press throughout his campaign is any indication of what his relationship with it will be like while he’s in the Oval Office, reporters may have more to be concerned about than rotating seats.
Trump regularly blacklisted specific reporters and news outlets from attending his mega rallies and press conferences.
After the Watergate story broke, President Nixon banned Washington Post reporters from covering social events in the White House, though the paper was still credentialed and permitted to enter the briefing room. It’s possible Trump could take a similar approach, though he said over the summer in a media interview that he would not block news outlets from covering his White House.
“When I’m representing the United States, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But I would let people know if somebody’s untruthful.”
One TV news White House correspondent said they were hopeful that the media’s relationship with the Trump administration would be cooperative.
“It’s premature to say definitively,” they told the Examiner when asked what the press corps should expect. “We don’t know who the press secretary will be yet. I’m hopeful things won’t change too much. They do seem to enjoy sparring with the press. Perhaps that tells us we will still have the access.”
So far, the Trump team has indicated it will at least maintain one of the norms: a traditional White House press pool to follow the president’s public whereabouts.
“We fully expect to operate a traditional pool and look forward to implementing our plans in the near future,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said earlier this month, after the president-elect flew from Florida to Washington for a meeting and without notifying the reporters covering his transition to the White House.
The White House Correspondents’ Association did not respond to a request for comment for this story, nor did Trump’s spokeswoman.
