In January 2020 , bestselling novelist Stephen King and Don Winslowtook to Twitterto make a surprising pledge . They offered to donate $ 200,000 to charity if Stephanie Grisham , the pressure secretary for President Donald Trump , concord to take motion from the full White Housepresscorps for one 60 minutes in the White House’spress briefingroom .
The offerreportedly was rejectedby Grisham who , since taking the line in June 2019 hasyet to hold even oneformal White House press briefing . Her horizon , expressed in aninterviewwith the Sinclair Broadcast Group , is that the briefings are unneeded because reporter get opportunities to put interrogation to Trump himself , sometimesover the bellow of the presidential helicopteron the White House lawn .
The History of the Press Briefing
For the fourth dimension being at least , the Trump governing body has abandoned what had been an important part of White House wardrobe corps ’ routine dating back to the late 1800s , before the official position of White House insistence secretary even exist . That ’s when President William McKinley set up a piece of work quad in the White House for newsperson and station his first personal writing table , John Addison Porter , to give the letter writer what theWhite House Historical Associationnotes were " more or less even briefings . "
The White House press briefing gradually evolve into a formal event . From the meter of President Herbert Hoover in the late twenties and other 1930s to Lyndon Johnson ’s tenure in the mid - to - later sixties , White House press secretaries hold twice - a twenty-four hours briefing sessions in their own offices , according to Martha Joynt Kumar ’s book " Managing the President ’s Message : The White House Communications Operation . " Richard Nixon , though no fan of the press , still call back the briefings were important enough that he had a swimming pool buck out so that he could convert the quad into a coming together room for briefing . That region is now known as the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room , in laurels of President Ronald Reagan ’s pressing secretary , who was seriously wounded during the try on Reagan ’s life sentence in 1981 .
During Bill Clinton ’s time in the White House in the nineties , mechanical press secretary Mike McCurry decide to permit the daily press briefings to betelevised . That practice continued until the Trump White House beganbarring camerasfrom the briefings in 2017 , before discontinuing them altogether .
The Value of White House Press Briefings
" I cerebrate the briefing were useful for a number of reasons , " former CNN White House correspondentDan Lothian , who spent five year covering the Bush and Obama organization , explains in an electronic mail . " First of all it was an opportunity to get the WH response or thinking on an event on - camera rather than a written statement . It allowed us to gang up up on them around a question they might have been trying to forfend . Showing them hedge an answer is sometimes the news show . Briefings also put statement on the phonograph recording for later compare . Finally , every now and then there would be break news and as happen after Osama bin Laden was catch , heap of great detail , ( even if some turned out not to be on-key ) . "
Lothian , who die on to determine Little Park Media and to become a visit scholar at the School of Journalism at Northeastern University , recalls that the format for the briefings was jolly constant . " There was a sure order to who got call off on . Briefings always start out with The Associated Press and end with a ‘ thank you ’ from The Associated Press . Once in a while the press writing table would mix it up a bit , but it usually happened around the same time each day and questions from the first two rows came in order of magnitude . "
" While it ’s true that the president and his representative often make themselves useable in informal preferences such as the White House lawn , it ’s not the same as wardrobe briefings , " explains Tom Jones , a senior medium writer for thePoynter Institute , a news media education organization , in an email interview .
" The format of shouting out interrogation under the audio of birl helicopter is not conducive to asking complicated insurance policy inquiry , nor pertinent follow - up questions , " he says . " The frenzied free - for - all of these much - too - brief informal interviews make it much harder to get into the issue that require nuance and specifics . It ’s so much easy for the president to brush aside or cut head he does n’t like when he ’s walking along the White House ground . When he or one of his representative are standing behind a podium in a control scene , they must present the questions that require long , meaty resolution as opposed to the one or two short sentences that suffice in those loose setting . "
That view fundamentally is shared by a group of 13 former White House military press repository , foreign service and military officials who published anopinion pieceon the CNN site in January 2020 , calling for Trump to mend the regular briefing . In their view , having to prepare for briefings helps the politics to run better . " The communion of information , known as prescribed guidance , among government officials and agencies helps ensure that an giving medication address with one voice , telling one tale , however compelling it might be , " they write .
Lothian also see to it the apparent end of the briefings as inauspicious . " It is a valid literary criticism that some reporters utilise briefings to showboat , " he suppose . " However , I call up when covering the White House , briefing are an important function that allow the public and reporters to sustain daily connections . Sometimes it ’s everyday information , other metre an peculiar question from the back of the elbow room can turn into the story of the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . "
Even so , Lothian says , journalist who cover the presidential term will bump a way to get stories . " This unexampled normal might be unfortunate , but not paralyze , " he explain . " newsperson are in the line of getting information , whether it comes from the mouth of a interpreter or from root all across the ringway . "
