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athering a group of White House correspondents for breakfast together is no small feat. Given the long days (and nights) they spend toiling in the West Wing and traveling with the leader of the free world, our morning meeting atop The Hay-Adams Hotel, where the White House would remain in their line of sight, took weeks to coordinate. But the conversation with these six seasonded reporters was worth the wait. They spoke openly on everything from their access to the Oval Office to the feeding frenzy surrounding the annual White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner. Our coffee-fueled talk included CNN’s Jim Acosta; the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin; Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry, NBC’s Chris Jansing; Al Jazeera America’s first-ever White House correspondent, Mike Viqueira; and Christi Parsons, president of the WHCA and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. It was Parsons who brought the discussion to an end by running off to a meeting to determine table assignments for the WHCA dinner on April 25. >> Washington Life: This is a rare event — all
of you having a meal together. With such busy schedules, when do you have time to eat ? Ed Henry: Because I know it’s going to be so crazy there every day, I have a ritual to get food and then walk in. Nine times out of 10, if you leave [the White House], something happens and then you get locked out. Chris Jansing: I do not leave the grounds and that’s really sort of the rule. You don’t know when something’s going to happen. And isn’t it true that on that morning that you say ‘today I’m going to get caught up on my expenses and answer my emails’ something completely unexpected happens? That’s the great part of the White House – when something big happens there’s this adrenaline rush and you feel like you’re in the epicenter of the world. Juliet Eilperin: There are these moments that happen and sometimes it’s an actual news event, something that’s breaking overseas, sometimes it’s the President talking to the press, when you do feel like history is being made. Getting a front
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2015
Breakfast with a view: correpondents answer questions from senior editor Virginia Coyne (center) at the Hay-Adams Hotel’s Top of the Hay overlooking the White House and Washington Monument.
seat to that is pretty great. How much of a White House press conference is orchestrated? Who gets called on and do you know ahead of time if the President will take your question? Christi Parsons: We don’t want it to be orchestrated in any way and I don’t think it is. I’ve been called on before and not known that it was coming. Sometimes you can read the body language so you do know, they seem to be doing newspapers today or it kind of feels like a TV day. Chris Jansing: Or International Women’s Day, when they called on all women. Christi Parsons: I didn’t even realize that was happening until it was over and everybody started tweeting it. Juliet Eilperin: Same with me and I was one of the people who was called on. I just noticed they weren’t calling on TV people. Mike Viqueira: Juliet hates TV! (laughter) Juliet, you did mention to me before breakfast that you feel the television people are called on more often during those live press conferences, correct? Juliet Eilperin: I think it’s more important for
them and for their viewers, and the White House recognizes it, and I also think there’s a level of [monetary] investment that the networks put into covering the White House that is then in turn recognized by the White House. Mike Viqueira: If they wanted to be equitable in that respect then they wouldn’t be doing the
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woman with Fruit Loops in the bathtub kind of thing [referring to YouTube vlogger GloZell, who recently interviewed the President]. I think those sort of equities and those sort of considerations are shifting a great deal when they try to decide who they’re going to have interview him, when, what venue, what issue. Jim Acosta: Not to be a Debbie Downer at this breakfast, but one of the issues that we run into is that we’re pressing them for more access, more press conferences.They do have all of these new outlets that they can turn to — YouTube, Vice, BuzzFeed — and because there’s this explosion of newer media out there, it creates fewer and fewer opportunities for the traditional White House press corps to ask questions.Whenever we raise this issue to people at the White House, the White House and the new media world say ‘oh, you guys are old media, you guys are dinosaurs, you’re dying.’ But I think there is this tug-of-war going on and quite frankly, I would like to see more orchestrating of press conferences because we need to have more of them. When you see the President giving access and interviews to YouTube video bloggers who have never covered the White House, how does that make you feel? Christi Parsons: I actually don’t have an
objection to that because I feel more questions from more diverse organizations is good. However, I do think that the independent press at the White House is not something the White House should ever try to go around because
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