media memo
Washington’s
Besieged Journalists Raise a Cocktail Glass, Darkly
The annual
weekend celebrating America’s free press went forward, even as the Trump
administration chips away at press freedoms.
Michael M. GrynbaumKatie Robertson
By Michael M. Grynbaum and Katie Robertson
Michael Grynbaum and Katie Robertson cover the news media.
They spoke with dozens of guests at events across Washington, D.C.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/business/media/white-house-correspondents-dinner.html
April 27, 2025, 12:23 a.m. ET
Usually, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner
features Hollywood stars, a zinger-filled comedy set and a public display of
comity between the White House and the press corps that covers it.
On Saturday, the dinner had no comedian and no president.
Among the smattering of celebrities on hand was Michael Chiklis, whose
best-known television role, in “The Shield,” concluded in 2008.
“It’s just us,” Eugene Daniels, the association’s president
and an MSNBC host, told his fellow journalists at the start of the night.
The reporters who spoke from the dais emphasized the
importance of the First Amendment, garnering repeated ovations from the
black-tie crowd. Levity came in the form of clips from past years, when
presidents still turned up and cracked wise about the press and themselves.
Hand-wringing about the dinner, once the apex of the
capital’s social calendar, is as much a Washington tradition as the
corporate-sponsored parties that surround it. But as media institutions grapple
with an onslaught from President Trump — who has sued and threatened television
networks, barred The Associated Press from presidential events and upended the
day-to-day workings of the White House press corps — the notion of a
booze-soaked celebration felt particularly jarring.
“The mood and reality sucks,” said Jim VandeHei, the
journalist and news executive who helped create Politico and then Axios, two
stalwarts of the Beltway media.
“No president attending, no comedian to make fun of all of
us, TV networks buckling under government pressure, a top producer quitting
over corporate interference and the public sour on the media and government,”
Mr. VandeHei said. “Enjoy the weekend!”
It is true that, in the last several days alone, the head of
“60 Minutes” resigned as CBS’s owner considered a multimillion-dollar payment
to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, and the Committee to Protect
Journalists, a nonprofit that aids reporters living under autocrats, issued a
safety advisory for journalists planning to visit the United States. And on
Friday afternoon, hours before the first wave of weekend parties, the Justice
Department announced that it would subpoena reporters’ phone records and compel
their testimony in leak investigations.
Maybe journalists could use a moment or two to relax.
“Our clients work so hard covering today’s nonstop news
cycle, and once a year we throw a big weekend of parties to honor them for
their work,” said Rachel Adler, the head of news at Creative Artists Agency,
who represents television journalists like Andrea Mitchell and Audie Cornish
and was the co-host of a jampacked soiree on Friday at a private Georgetown
club. “Why would this year be any different?”
Tammy Haddad, a Washington impresario whose annual Saturday
garden party went ahead unabated and well-attended, said that for all the
tensions over press access and independence, the weekend was still a chance for
community. “Some chose to stay away, but there are opportunities to make new
connections and find some common ground,” she said. (Her guests included the
editor Tina Brown, the chef Bobby Flay and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor
recently sworn in to lead Medicare and Medicaid.)
Still, the correspondents’ dinner itself carried a more
serious tenor than in years past. Some of the loudest applause came for
journalists at The A.P., which has been embroiled in a legal fight with the
administration after Mr. Trump sought to restrict access to its reporters for
using the term “Gulf of Mexico” in its coverage.
Mr. Daniels pledged support to The A.P. and also to Voice of
America, another outlet that has been the target of Mr. Trump’s scorn. With no
entertainer for the evening, Mr. Daniels served as the keynote speaker, calling
for journalistic solidarity.
“What we are not is the opposition,” he said. “What we are
not is the enemy of the people. And what we are not is the enemy of the state.”
He called journalists “competitive and pushy,” but also “human,” noting the
effort that reporters make to ensure accurate information reaches the public.
In interviews, top journalists at multiple news outlets said
that it had been nearly impossible to convince celebrities and lawmakers to
attend as guests. One reporter said that the list of people who had rejected
invitations to join the publication’s table was in the “dozens.”
This is a dinner that once attracted the likes of George
Clooney and Steven Spielberg. On Saturday, it seemed as if the most au courant
actor in town was Jason Isaacs, the Englishman who played the dad on the latest
edition of “The White Lotus,” and whose character spent the season fantasizing
about a murder-suicide.
Mark Leibovich, a correspondent for The Atlantic, said he
found it refreshing to have an evening more focused on the act of reporting
than a comedian’s speech.
Still, he added, “I wish we could have used the time we
gained from that to all leave an hour earlier.”
The correspondents’ association represents hundreds of
journalists who regularly cover the workings of the White House. Its autonomy
has been undermined repeatedly by the Trump administration, which broke
precedent by handpicking which outlets are granted access to the “pool” that
covers smaller presidential events and has signaled plans to shake up the
seating chart in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. (For decades, the
correspondents’ association has overseen the pool and the seating chart.)
In February, the group announced that a comedian, Amber
Ruffin, the actress and talk-show host, would be the dinner’s featured
entertainer. Last month, Ms. Ruffin’s appearance was canceled. She had appeared
on a podcast where she referred to the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch
of murderers.”
Mr. Daniels said he wanted “to ensure the focus is not on
the politics of division.”
Ms. Ruffin has since mocked the group for canceling her set,
quipping: “We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy
dinners — that’s what it says in the First Amendment.”
In previous years — including in 2018, during Mr. Trump’s
first term — the White House press secretary attended the dinner and sat on the
dais. Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s current press secretary, said she had
turned down an invitation.
On Friday, during an interview with the Axios reporter Mike
Allen, Ms. Leavitt was asked to describe the news media in one word.
“Exhausted,” she said, with a smile.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media,
politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since
2016.
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