The White House briefing room has many functions: a storage space for tripods and camera gear, a backdrop for visitor photos, a temporary workspace for journalists without a desk.
Next week will mark six months since the last White House "Daily" briefing, another erosion of transparency and democracy under Trump or a sad indictment of the "Fake news" media's incivility, depending on your view.
"The reason Sarah Sanders does not go to the 'podium' much anymore is that the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately, in particular certain members of the press," is how Trump defended the scarcity of briefings earlier this year.
The press briefings as Americans, and the world, have come to know them can be dated to 1969, when President Richard Nixon removed the indoor swimming pool installed by Franklin Roosevelt and replaced it with the briefing room.
The relationship between press and presidents evolved over the next two decades, shifting and changing with successive presidents until 1995, when Bill Clinton's press secretary, Mike McCurry, began letting the cameras cover the full briefing.
"Journalists don't have any real opportunity to follow up, to go deeper, to ask real questions about the meaning of policy, and I think there's been a price paid for that because we're not really understanding completely what is going on in this presidency," he told the APSA. There are advantages for the White House too in bringing back the briefings, according to Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under George W. Bush.
It would also offer insight into policy areas which are not at the front of the president's mind, said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, who attended her first briefing in 1975.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-white-house-briefing-has-been-dead-for-six-months
Next week will mark six months since the last White House "Daily" briefing, another erosion of transparency and democracy under Trump or a sad indictment of the "Fake news" media's incivility, depending on your view.
"The reason Sarah Sanders does not go to the 'podium' much anymore is that the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately, in particular certain members of the press," is how Trump defended the scarcity of briefings earlier this year.
The press briefings as Americans, and the world, have come to know them can be dated to 1969, when President Richard Nixon removed the indoor swimming pool installed by Franklin Roosevelt and replaced it with the briefing room.
The relationship between press and presidents evolved over the next two decades, shifting and changing with successive presidents until 1995, when Bill Clinton's press secretary, Mike McCurry, began letting the cameras cover the full briefing.
"Journalists don't have any real opportunity to follow up, to go deeper, to ask real questions about the meaning of policy, and I think there's been a price paid for that because we're not really understanding completely what is going on in this presidency," he told the APSA. There are advantages for the White House too in bringing back the briefings, according to Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under George W. Bush.
It would also offer insight into policy areas which are not at the front of the president's mind, said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, who attended her first briefing in 1975.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-white-house-briefing-has-been-dead-for-six-months
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