Why I don't completely hate the White House Correspondents Dinner...

...,but I do hate how the dinner, scheduled for next week, has been organized in recent years.

At the risk of sticking my foot all the way inside my mouth professionally, I’m going to admit here that I’m not opposed to events like next week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner – in which journalists mingle at a tony, big-ticket dinner alongside the politicians and political figures they usually are tasked with covering.

Yes, the optics of such an event can be terrible, especially at a time when Americans are struggling with higher food and gas prices, begging for journalists to press President Donald Trump and his administration for answers. This is a look which gets even worse now that Trump plans to attend the dinner for the first time as president, creating a situation where he may deliver a speech packed with the same lies he often tells in public presentations now -- lending the appearance he has succeeded in cowing the political press after spending much of his second term using lawsuits and federal regulations to strike out against media outlets he does not like.

But events like this can also be invaluable for journalists covering a beat like media or politics in ways I will explain a little further down.

Before I write any more, I do want to note that I am opposed to the way the White House Correspondents Association has handled organizing the last two dinners. I never understood why the Association last year invited an obvious and consistent critic of Trump like comic Amber Ruffin and then fired her when she promised to boldly criticize his administration’s tactics during the dinner.

I also don’t understand why, if the Association was going to step away from hiring a political comic at all this year, they picked mentalist Oz Pearlman as the entertainer. If attacks on independent journalism and the free press are so dire and partisan the group doesn’t have the stomach to bring a satirist onboard, then why not center the program on all the challenges to the first amendment looming over journalism and journalists this year?

(Yeah, I know they did something like that last year after firing Ruffin. But I’d rather see a program assembled along these lines with some time and thought behind it, rather than as a hurried alternative.)

I’ll also note here that my good friend and colleague Kelly McBride wrote a searing and incisive column lining up all the reasons why the WHCD was always a questionable idea and may be a particularly bad one now.

She wrote:

“Yes, the dinner raises money for scholarships and celebrates watchdog reporting. But that could be accomplished without the cringy optics of elevating journalists to the same elite status as the powerbrokers who run Washington, D.C., and the rest of the world.”

True enough. But the fact of the matter is, Washington DC journalists often are running in the same circles as high-powered politicos. There are much lower profile parties where the same kind of crowds are gathering to have the same kinds of discussions about the state of politics and media.

But those parties aren’t happening in the bright spotlight of a public dinner where all the attendees and their guests are widely known. So the optics may be better, but the behavior is much the same.

(NBC anchor Lester Holt and actor John Leguizamo at the WHCD in 2023)

I’ll admit to seeing this all from a certain perspective, as someone who attended two of these dinners, in 2022 and 2023, and found them extremely useful as someone covering modern media and celebrity.

It’s not often, when covering a beat expansive as media or politics, that you get to attend an event which brings together loads of people from your coverage area in one spot on one night. I always view such events as opportunities for source-building, vetting of coverage ideas and networking – I may be having fun with my colleagues from NPR, but I’m also low-key working my beat.

This first time I attended the WHCD, when former Daily Show host Trevor Noah was the entertainer, I chatted up Chris Licht, who was just starting his fateful tenure as president of CNN Worldwide, made connections with folks from the Daily Show and CBS, and spent time with a few media executives working on diversity issues in media.

The second time, when then-Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. was slinging the jokes, I got to speak with mogul Byron Allen – laying the groundwork which later led to this interview on NPR. I had already covered Wood’s rise in comedy to preview the dinner for NPR, but my observations of his work that night also helped me understand his thinking when he revealed to me his plans to leave The Daily Show.

Oh, and I did get to provide a little postgame analysis for CNN right after the dinner ended.

For me, the dinner was an opportunity to approach people I might only encounter in more formal settings – to learn their thinking and ask about industry trends in a way which might lend insight. It was something I also did for many years during industry receptions at the TV Critics Associations twice-annual press tours – sharing a drink and conversation with the president of FX or a top showrunner from an HBO series to learn more about how they saw the industry.

In my fantasies, today’s WHCD would present a program downplaying entertainment to focus aggressively on the challenges facing journalism today. Speakers can emphasize protecting the First Amendment and defending the importance of journalists having the freedom to pursue stories without pressure or intimidation – either from the federal government or media owners trying to protect their core businesses.

This is an approach championed by the Society of Professional Journalists — where I serve as a member of the Ethics Committee — along with dozens of other journalists who have signed as petition to the WHCA imploring the group to condemn Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment and keep the dinner from becoming a giant exercise in normalizing his authoritarian behavior or somehow owning the assembled press.

The SPJ writes:

The coalition urges the association to use the platform of its annual dinner to defend press freedom amid ongoing threats to the First Amendment and to reaffirm the essential role of a free and independent press in American democracy. It calls on the association to send a forthright message to President Donald J. Trump condemning his attacks on the First Amendment.

“The collective weight of the administration’s actions — retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press — represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president,” the letter warns.

The coalition also calls on the association to make clear that press freedom transcends politics, urging it to “reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue.”

Here’s what you DON’T do: Organize a private even honoring the President whose administration has enabled your media deals — a President who, as we have noted earlier, has sued media outlets and used official regulatory powers to punish journalists doing work he does not like — while trying to pretend it’s also a tribute to the First Amendment.

(Invitation to Paramount CEO David Ellison’s pre-WHCD event honoring Trump, as published by the media newsletter Status.)

As media newsletters Breaker and Status have reported, Paramount CEO David Ellison will host a private dinner Thursday, billed as “honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House Correspondents.” This is a prime example of how uncaring media owners have damaged their own journalists’ credibility in an effort to promote their other businesses.

I’m betting there are lots of savvy media consumers who will think twice about any reporting they see on CBS about the Trump administration after noting how the company honored the President at a special, private gala.

I much prefer the competing event Status has organized Thursday, aimed at celebrating the importance of a free press, complete with swag that helps raise money for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

As Status’ Jon Passantino wrote Saturday:

We won’t be inviting members of the administration who have worked to undermine and assault the free press. Trump, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, Brendan Carr and others won’t be welcome.

We believe that the role of the press isn’t to celebrate power, but to hold it to account—and to defend the freedoms that make that work possible.

During the White House Correspondents Dinner, the WHCA will hand awards to journalists who have provided incisive coverage of the White House, including the Associated Press, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, which just saw a judge dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the president over its coverage of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A program which highlights strong journalism and coverage without fear or favor would be wonderful. Perhaps it might remind those deep pockets media owners -- David Ellison, are you listening? — what kind of work they should be championing at their various platforms.

Hard to imagine that kind of discussion happening when Oz Pearlman is the headliner.

I know I’m probably too idealistic in my thinking. The optics of the WHCD has always been difficult. But I also supported the National Association of Black Journalists when it welcomed Trump to its national convention in 2024 – the group routinely extended invites to Democratic and Republican candidates for president in election years, and his appearance gave Black journalists a chance to see his response to tough questions up close.

From my perspective, the problem isn’t a tony dinner bringing together journalists and politicians, including a President who has often attacked the press. The challenge is making sure that what happens once the dinner starts isn’t about normalizing those attacks, but showing the President and other politicos the importance of a free press which scrupulously covers his administration, upholding democracy in the process.

Like I said, I’m an idealist.