Why Trump’s appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is causing controversy
US President Donald Trump – who regularly launches accusations and verbal abuse at news companies and journalists he doesn’t like – will be the guest of honor at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual celebration of press freedom.
This is the first time that Trump will attend this event as president.
The organization’s decision to accept him has drawn widespread criticism and raised concerns about the potential impact on public opinion of the media covering the White House.
Six national journalism groups said Trump has engaged in “a systematic and comprehensive attack on press freedom by a sitting American president.”
Those attacks, according to a long list put together by the groups, have included trying to prevent journalists from reporting any defense-related news without the Pentagon’s approval, launching a federal investigation into major broadcasters over their coverage and suing the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the parent company of CBS News for alleged defamation.
There are critics who wonder why an organization made up of reporters covering the White House wants Trump to attend an event designed to respect the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which prevents the government from restricting the freedom of the press.
Journalists’ groups and more than 250 individuals — including retired television anchors Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson — signed a letter to the organization demanding that the dinner include “stronger defenses of press freedom and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom.”
Caroline Hendrie, executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the groups that signed the letter, says the dinner needs to send a message that government actions that endanger press freedom are unacceptable.
“What’s happening right now in the United States is not just a normal conflict between the government and the media. It’s an ongoing effort to intimidate, discredit and weaken independent journalism,” Hendrie told CBC News.
Late night comics are hosted and grilled
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual tradition in Washington that has evolved in recent years into a televised spectacle, with red carpets and celebrities in the audience and late-night TV stars as hosts.
Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have all taken turns as MC, with both the president and the media getting occasional comedic roasts.
None of the comedians who make fun of Trump every night on network television will get a chance to do it in person at this year’s dinner. Featured curator is Oz Pearlman, psychic/magician.
The president also gets his turn at the mic. Barack Obama has pulled off his share of funny jokes over the years, perhaps most famously in 2011 when he mocked Trump, who was in the audience.
When Trump skipped the event in 2017, he became the first sitting president since 1981, when Ronald Reagan missed it because he was still recovering from a gunshot wound he received a few weeks earlier.
Trump calls media ‘enemy of the people’
Instead, Trump attended a rally in Pennsylvania where he criticized the media for “fake news” and say it deserves a “large, failing grade” in telling the truth.
There are observers who are wondering what the president will say on Saturday night about the group he usually calls “the enemy of the people.”
Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit that specializes in journalism training and media education, predicts that Trump will be happy to beat the media into submission.
“I bet he’s going to declare a victory for the media and that he’s proven to the public that journalism can’t be trusted, that all the news is fake, and he’s promoting the success of his presidency in a place where no one can question him,” McBride told CBC News.
McBride wrote the latest comments in which he argued against the foundation of the writers’ association dinner, not only that this year the journalists and their owners will sit down with the president again. it undermines their credibility.
“I think the journalism that’s been done in this administration is amazing,” McBride said.
“What’s important [ordinary Americans] that there is a competent and strong press corps in the United States that can hold this president and his administration to account,” he said.
McBride says it’s also important for the public to have faith in the media, an institution long-term research suggests is losing trust. He worries that an event like the writers’ association dinner will undermine that faith.
“It makes sense for members of the public to say, ‘You know, I’m going to add this fact to the pile of other facts that encourage me not to trust you,'” McBride said.
The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Weijia Jiang, said in a statement that the dinner supports the association’s awards for excellence in journalism and scholarships for future journalists.
“We are happy that the president has accepted our invitation and we look forward to being hosted,” said Jiang.
The organization has been constantly criticizing the administration since Trump returned to the White House last year due to various restrictions on its members. That included barring the prestigious Associated Press from White House events because of the wire service’s refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” as Trump passively renamed it last year.
Trump has shown contempt for female journalists. Some of the worst examples happened in less than two weeks last November:
- “Shut up! Shut up pig!” he bellowed at Bloomberg Reporter Catherine Lucey when she asked him a question about Jeffrey Epstein.
- He criticized ABC News reporter Mary Bruce as “a bad person and a bad reporter” and threatened to revoke the ABC’s broadcasting license after questioning the Saudi Crown Prince. Mohammed bin Salman about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
- He lashed out on social media at New York Times reporter Katie Rogers for an article about her life and energy, calling her “a bad third-rate journalist, inside and out.”
He also ordered the end of all funding for the PBS television corporation and National Public Radio and moved to dissolve the federal agency that finances overseas news broadcasts in authoritarian countries. Both orders are being challenged in court.
Andrew Chang explains why US President Donald Trump decided to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the first time as president, after boycotting the annual event during his first term. Photos provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
