Under normal conditions news reporting from the White House is a tough job. Even though my past news reporting experience never reached that level, I can imagine what that must be like. I admire the experienced and professional reporters trying to do that.
However, these days it’s more like reporting from a crime scene and not government or politics. In every encounter the White House reporters should be asking about all the laws and court rulings being broken by this administration, not to mention the all the grift and fraud.
Instead of construction barriers, the White House should be surrounded by yellow tape reading ‘Police Line – Do Not Cross’. They could have used that on Jan. 6, 2021. Back then another version of yellow tape wording would have been more appropriate – ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Cross’. In my newspaper days, we called that reporter beat ‘courts and cops’.
Banning reporters from the White House press briefings is clearly a violation of the First Amendment right of freedom of the press. The three outcasts are suing and will prevail, yet it’s another example of the strategy to harass and sow chaos. With this administration White House reporters should receive hazardous duty pay.
In these abnormal times, so much of the ‘news’ from the White House is just noise, with little fact or truth. If the president has been accused of ‘gaslighting’ his cult followers with inflammatory rhetoric, perhaps you could say the news media has been inadvertently gaslighting the president. Simply by reporting all the blather spewing from his mouth, news coverage provides the oxygen for the fire of attention that he craves.
Empty the pool
It was good to see the announcement that the major networks will boycott White House pool news coverage in response to the ban. Ironically, the announcement came from the Fox News Washington Bureau Chief. Since emerging from some dark cave in the 1990s, Fox (Faux) News and its commentators have greatly contributed to the political polarization we have today.
And since this administration no longer plays by the rules and conventions, neither should the news media. The news reporting convention in this case is the ‘prominence’ factor in determining what is news. If a prominent figure (president, movie star, mayor) says something in public, that is news.
The best approach today is to report was the administration does, not what the president says. This is a big job, because the president really doesn’t do anything of substance. His enablers and handlers do all the dirty work. Before, it was comparatively easy to cover the White House because the words of past presidents meant something.
Today, reporting news from the White House requires attention to all president’s handlers and influencers: Todd Blanche, Steven Miller, Russell Vought, J.D. Vance, Jerad Kushner, David Sacks, Elon Musk, Sean Hannity, Howard Lutnick, Susie Wiles, the Heritage Foundation, and who can forget Natalie Harp and Walt Nauta?
Like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the current president is no more than a smoke screen for those seeking to grab wealth and power and diminish democracy and engaging in ‘culture wars’ to help do that.
Buried logs
From Jan. 20, 2009, through Jan. 20, 2017, the White House recorded nearly six million visitor log entries. From Jan 20, 2017, through Jan. 20, 2021, and from Jan. 20, 2025, to now, we don’t know how many visitors there have been because the White House no longer releases its visitor logs.
The actual number of people is fewer, since some are repeat visitors, such as reporters who go there for daily news briefings. At least we know who they have denied entry recently, White House news pool reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
I’m sure that prior to 2017 the White House website did not have a “Media Offender of the Week” page. Currently, it lists CNN for reporting on the president’s health and habit of falling asleep during the day including cabinet meetings and major events.
The administration’s claim that “This is a blatant lie founded upon cherry-picked screenshots of President Trump blinking or reading,” is absurd when anyone watching video can clearly see that he has dozed off. In reality, we should be talking about the “political offender of the century.”
Online rumble
It seems as though the current administration spends a lot more time on its website content than it does learning about the Mideast, Iran in particular, and other important issues, such as tariffs or the price of fuel. So you don’t have to, I did look and try to take an objective view of whitehouse.gov. Its design is very impressive. It’s content of glitz and glamour could sway the gullible and cult followers.
So far I have not looked at (gag) ‘Truth Social’ and I don’t plan to. However, it was interesting to learn that the site reportedly operates on cloud services provided by Rumble, a Canadian online video and cloud platform. It originated in Canada, but now lists its headquarters in Longboat Key, FL. While it claims to be neutral, its content clearly leans right.
With all the gold gild and destruction at the White House these days, I’m not sure that I’d even want to visit. Prior to 2017, under a previous administration when it might be said to be the golden years and not leaf, my wife and I missed out on a chance to tour the White House due to a flight schedule.
After touring the Capitol, we signed up for a White House tour through Congressman Collin Peterson’s office. I was not expecting to hear back and was surprised by a call about the tour. It was scheduled for the next day at about the same time we were to leave town. We regretted missing out. Today I would have no interest, other than a morbid fascination with destruction and fake glitter.
