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These are unusual times on the White House beat, and not just because there’s a fire hose of news to cover. Reporting itself has become news, given the aggressive efforts by the Trump administration to undermine and manipulate mainstream reporters who cover the White House. The list includes blocking the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One; seizing control of the press pool from its traditional steward, the nonpartisan White House Correspondents’ Association; having the FCC investigate news organizations; and gutting Voice of America and other federally funded international broadcasters.
While the WHCA has issued generic protest statements, it’s hard to know how individual reporters feel. Outside of a handful of veteran correspondents, few will comment or express criticism with their names attached. When approached, White House reporters tend to respond with a brusque “no comment” or pleas to withhold their names, if they respond at all. The reluctance to speak extends even to those who are supposed to speak on behalf of the press corps; WHCA president Eugene Daniels did not respond to a request for comment for this article. The White House beat may be the most prestigious in journalism, but in my experience, it’s also the one with the most terrified reporters.
A recent story by Charlotte Klein in New York magazine demonstrates this problem. Klein did an admirable job of ferreting out the views of White House reporters caught in the current maelstrom. Yet except for Peter Baker, the New York Times’ veteran White House reporter, Klein was unable to nudge any of her subjects from behind the veil of anonymity. Critical comments come from sources identified as “one White House reporter” and “another White House reporter.” A third White House reporter also weighs in, name withheld.
Such opaque sourcing raises more questions than it answers. Do these reporters work for large organizations or small ones? Do they report for TV, radio, or online publications? Are they solo operators, bloggers, “influencers”? Seasoned veterans or junior reporters? Readers have long said they dislike blind quotes because they can’t tell where an opinion is coming from and how much authority—or ax to grind—the source has. White House reporters are frequently the authors of their own blind quotes.
I’m sympathetic to Klein. I’ve written stories about the beat that are littered with such unattributed comments. I’ve approached many White House reporters for comment and been similarly stiff-armed with demands that the responses be on background only. I also agreed to shield their identities, but only reluctantly. My choices were limited: I could accept the background-only terms, or get nothing at all.
The list of those refusing to go on the record over the years runs through almost every major news organization. Cable and broadcast network correspondents—the highest-profile people on the beat—are notoriously circumspect. But so are those at many other media outlets, including the wire services and my own former shop, the Washington Post.
Why? Well, for one thing: “Most reporters want to cover the news, not be the news,” as ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl explained it to me last week. (Karl, like Baker, has seniority and stature, and often does speak for attribution.) “They aren’t looking to pick fights with the White House—this White House or any other White House. We just want to do our jobs.”
In view of the dangers confronting the press, maybe it’s time to reconsider.
Let’s note for starters that reporters on other beats are often more willing, even happy, to talk about what they do and the challenges they face, names attached. I’ve occasionally reported from the halls of Congress, and found its press denizens refreshingly candid. Klein, who covers the press for New York, has found reporters on other beats more forthcoming, too. When Trump was on trial in New York, she wrote about the attendant media circus. Reporters routinely went on the record with comments. Klein told me that may be a function of the beat: apart from court officials, trials have an ever-evolving cast of principal sources—plaintiffs and defendants—with whom reporters don’t typically maintain long-term relationships. White House reporters, on the other hand, rely on people who may be in positions of power for years. A candid or critical comment could harm that relationship, she suggested.
Reporters at the White House typically tell me that their reticence stems from their own news organizations, which prohibit them from speaking to the press without authorization. “The sole reason in my case is that I would be punished by my employer if I went on the record” without preclearance, a network correspondent told me last week (yes, this story has blind quotes, too!). This reporter, who has decades of experience, has often spoken to me, but almost always on background.
To be sure, no one is required to risk his or her livelihood by defying a corporate edict. But, again in my experience, reporters don’t try hard enough to seek permission. And let’s not forget the quasi-hypocritical aspects of this policy: Journalists are employed to seek comment from others, but they can’t give comments, even merely factual or explanatory ones, when asked?
What’s wholly hypocritical about this is that these same reporters do comment, usually just not on their own working conditions. Any number of White House journalists pop up on cable panels and podcasts to analyze—i.e., offer opinions about—the latest developments, be they Trump’s tariff policies or Ukraine peace initiatives. They write books and memoirs about their experiences. Presumably, they’re doing so with the boss’s permission (or long after they no longer need the boss’s permission). What’s principally different, however, is that they’re avoiding, in real time, what they know best: the White House’s efforts to muzzle or manipulate them and how these efforts harm public understanding.
The general timidity of the press these days may also reflect the White House’s aggressive efforts to push back, even insult, those who go public in some fashion. Politico reporter Jake Sherman got a swift back of the hand from the White House’s “Rapid Response” team on X on Tuesday after he observed that Elon Musk’s comments about cutting Social Security “will play in countless Democratic TV ads over the next few years.” In response, the White House account posted, “Stop lying, Fake Sherman” over a video of Musk specifying that he wanted to cut billions of dollars in unspecified “waste” in the program (White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted the exchange). After Baker, the New York Times reporter, wrote on X last month that Trump’s commandeering of the press pool was reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s anti-press tactics in Russia, Leavitt trashed Baker on X. “Gone are the days where left-wing stenographers posing as journalists, such as yourself, dictate who gets to ask what,” she wrote.
Despite Leavitt’s provocation, Baker said he saw no reason to get into a “back and forth” with her. (Leavitt didn’t respond to my request for comment.) As a general rule, he told me, “I always try to stick with saying something I’d be comfortable putting in the paper. You shouldn’t say something online [or in an interview] that you wouldn’t put in a story.” Baker said he has never been disciplined by his editors for his public comments. “I think they trust me,” he said. “My bosses are very supportive of us explaining ourselves. If the public has a problem with our credibility, one solution is to explain what we do.… The philosophy is, as long as you’re professional about it, then it’s a good thing to be out there.”
Some of journalism’s elder statesmen give a mixed read on this. Former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr. said he thinks reporters shouldn’t step out of their traditional vow of silence. “I’ve always thought reporting, rather than making public statements, was what journalists should do,” Downie told me. The burden of commentary, he said, isn’t on reporters but on “top editors, publishers, and network TV executives,” as well as lawyers defending the news media in court.
But Frank Sesno, a former CNN White House correspondent, said greater activism is necessary. “I do think people need to play a different game, because the rules have changed fundamentally,” he said. Journalists who fail to make the case for themselves do so at their own peril, he told me. “When people in power double down on misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, when they’re actively undermining reporters, that means it’s a different playing field.… I’ve felt for a long time that news organizations need to go on the offensive by explaining what we do, how we do it, and why it’s important. If you don’t, you cede the field to the administration.”
Talk of “playing offense” makes storied journalists like Marvin Kalb uneasy. Kalb got his start as a reporter in the 1950s and went on to a distinguished career as a national TV reporter for CBS and NBC, covering presidents and serving as moderator of Meet the Press. At ninety-four, he continues to teach and write. But Kalb says he isn’t sure how best to respond. “I’ve given this agonizing deliberation, and every time I confront the question, I say, ‘I don’t know,’” he told me on Thursday. “I’ve always believed a reporter shouldn’t be an advocate for his own ideas or beliefs, that he should report. Yet if freedom of the press is in danger, is it not responsible to sound off? Should we not change those fundamental rules if the system is changing and is in danger? Part of me says, ‘Yes, do it. Don’t be afraid to speak up.’”
Of course, given the White House’s hostility, the consequences for not remaining silent can go beyond a tart exchange on social media, as HuffPost reporter S.V. Dáte found out last month. When Dáte posed tough questions to Trump while serving in the press pool aboard Air Force in early February—he asked about Trump’s plans to meet with and celebrate law enforcement officers shortly after pardoning rioters who assaulted Capitol Police on January 6, 2021—Trump reacted angrily and in belittling fashion. Soon there was more. After the White House press office decided to take control of the pool and select its own journalists, the first reporter thrown out of the rotation was Dáte. “It was clearly punishment,” Dáte told me, for asking Trump questions he didn’t like. Dáte noted that this was why an independent press pool was necessary in the first place.
The experience hasn’t caused Dáte to shy away from talking about Trump and the White House in public, however. “I have the freedom others don’t have,” he said. “I have nothing to lose. They won’t give me an interview. I may as well get out an accurate account of what’s happening.”
Besides, he said, not talking normalizes the threats to the press posed by Trump. “To explain what you do and how you do it is not crossing some line,” he noted. “We’re not supposed to sit idly by and be stenographers.”
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