Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vogelbam here. In January, best selling novelists Stephen
Speaker 1: King and Don Winslow took to Twitter to make a
Speaker 1: surprising pledge. They offered to donate two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to charity if Stephanie Grisham, the Press secretary for President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, agreed to take questions from the full White
Speaker 1: House Press Corps for one hour in the White House's
Speaker 1: press briefing room. The offer reportedly was rejected by Grisham, who,
Speaker 1: since taking the job in June of nine, has yet
Speaker 1: to hold even one formal White House press briefing. Her views,
Speaker 1: expressed in an interview with the Sinclair Broadcast Group, is
Speaker 1: that the briefings are unnecessary because reporters get opportunities to
Speaker 1: put questions to Trump himself, sometimes over the roar of
Speaker 1: the presidential helicopter on the White House lawn. For the
Speaker 1: time being, at least, the Trump administration has abandoned what
Speaker 1: had been an important part of White House Press Corps
Speaker 1: routine dating back to the late eighteen hundreds, before the
Speaker 1: official position of White House Press secretary even existed. That's
Speaker 1: when President William McKinley set up a workspace in the
Speaker 1: White House for reporters and sent his first personal secretary,
Speaker 1: John Addison Porter, to give the correspondence what the White
Speaker 1: House Historical Association notes were more or less regular briefings.
Speaker 1: The White House press briefing gradually evolved into a formal event.
Speaker 1: From the time of President Herbert Hoover in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and early thirties to Lyndon Johnson's tenure in
Speaker 1: the mid to late sixties, white House press secretaries held
Speaker 1: twice a day briefing sessions in their own offices. According
Speaker 1: to Martha joint Kumar's book Managing the President's Message, the
Speaker 1: White House Communications Operation, Richard Nixon, though no fan of
Speaker 1: the press, still thought the briefings were important enough that
Speaker 1: he had a swimming pool torn out so that he
Speaker 1: could convert the space into a meeting room for briefings.
Speaker 1: That area is now known as the James Brady Press
Speaker 1: Briefing Room, in honor of President Ronald Reagan's press secretary,
Speaker 1: who was seriously wounded during the attempt on Reagan's life.
Speaker 1: During Bill Clinton's time in the White House in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Press Secretary Mike McCurry decided to allow the
Speaker 1: daily press briefings to be televised. That practice continued until
Speaker 1: the Trump White House began barring cameras from briefings in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, before discontinuing them altogether. We spoke via email
Speaker 1: with FORMERCY and N White House correspondent Dan Lothian, who
Speaker 1: spent five years covering the Bush and Obama administrations. He said,
Speaker 1: I think the briefings were useful for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: First of all, it was an opportunity to get the
Speaker 1: White House response or thinking on an issue on camera
Speaker 1: rather than a written statement. It allowed us to gang
Speaker 1: up on them around a question they might have been
Speaker 1: trying to avoid, showing them dodge and answer is sometimes.
Speaker 1: The news briefings also put statements on the record for
Speaker 1: later comparison. Finally, every now and then there would be
Speaker 1: breaking news, and as happened after a Summa bin Lauden
Speaker 1: was caught lots of great details, even if some turned
Speaker 1: out not to be true. Lothian, who went on to
Speaker 1: found Little Park Media and to become a visiting caller
Speaker 1: at the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, recalls that
Speaker 1: the format for the briefings was fairly constant. He said
Speaker 1: there was a certain order to who got called on.
Speaker 1: Briefings always started with the associated press and ended with
Speaker 1: a thank you from the Associated Press. Once in a
Speaker 1: while the Press secretary wouldn't mix it up a bit,
Speaker 1: but it usually happened around the same time each day,
Speaker 1: and questions from the first two rows came in order.
Speaker 1: We also spoke by email with Tom Jones, a senior
Speaker 1: media writer for the Pointer Institute, a journalism education organization.
Speaker 1: He said, while it's true that the president and his
Speaker 1: representatives often make themselves available in informal settings such as
Speaker 1: the White House lawn, it's not the same as press briefings.
Speaker 1: The format of shouting out questions under the sound of
Speaker 1: a whirling helicopter is not conducive to asking complicated policy
Speaker 1: questions nor pertinent follow up questions. The frenzied free for
Speaker 1: all of these. Much too brief informal interviews make it
Speaker 1: much harder to get into the topics that require nuance
Speaker 1: and specifics. It's so much easy for the president to
Speaker 1: brush aside or ignore questions he doesn't like when he's
Speaker 1: walking along the White House grounds, when he or one
Speaker 1: of his representatives are standing behind a podium in a
Speaker 1: controlled setting, they must face the questions that require long,
Speaker 1: substantive answers, as opposed to the one or two short
Speaker 1: sentences that suffice in those informal settings. That view, essentially
Speaker 1: is shared by a group of thirteen former White House
Speaker 1: press secretaries and foreign service and military officials who published
Speaker 1: an opinion piece on CNN's website in January calling for
Speaker 1: Trump to restore the regular briefings. In their view, having
Speaker 1: to prepare for briefings helps the government to run better,
Speaker 1: they wrote. The sharing of information known as official guidance,
Speaker 1: among government officials and agencies helps ensure that an administration
Speaker 1: speaks with one voice, telling one story, however compelling it
Speaker 1: might be. Lothian also sees the apparent end of the
Speaker 1: briefings as unfortunate. He said, it's a valid criticism that
Speaker 1: some reporters use briefings to show boat. However, I think
Speaker 1: when covering the White House, briefings are an important function
Speaker 1: that allow the public and reporters to maintain daily connections.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's routine information, other times an odd question from
Speaker 1: the back of the room can turn into the story
Speaker 1: of the day. Even so, Lothian says journalists who cover
Speaker 1: the administration will find a way to get stories. He
Speaker 1: said this new normal might be unfortunate, but not paralyzing.
Speaker 1: Reporters are in the business of getting information, whether it
Speaker 1: comes from the mouth of a spokesperson or from sources
Speaker 1: all across the Beltway. Today's episode was written by Patrick J.
Speaker 1: Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on
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