An Open Letter to the White House Media Affairs Office
To Whom It May Concern:
We’ve been trying diligently and unsuccessfully this week to gain access to a White House press briefing. Unfortunately we’ve never received a call back despite over 20 different phone calls and one visit over the past four days. Since we have not been able to make our case to a White House staffer for covering the briefing, we decided to take a few paragraphs here to explain our efforts.
Full letter after the jump.
Both White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan and the White House Correspondents’ Association are on record as saying that the White House should be open and accessible to journalists seeking to cover the President and his administration–and that, as long as a news organization met several basic tests of its legitimacy and independence, its reporters should be granted access.
Specifically, in his February 10th Press Gaggle, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan explained the process through which reporters can gain access to the White House and laid out a very fair and wise interpretation of the role of the White House Press Office in the credentialing process. He said at the time that he did not believe it was the place of the White House to test the legitimacy of any news gathering organization seeking to cover the President:
As the press secretary, I don’t think it’s the role of the Press Secretary to get into picking or choosing who gets press credentials….I’ve never inserted myself into the process. [Jeff Gannon], like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly, and so he was cleared two years ago to receive daily passes, just like many others are. The issue comes up — it becomes, in this day and age, when you have a changing media, it’s not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist. And there — it gets into the issue of advocacy journalism. Where do you draw the line?
According to these and other statements by the White House, Fishbowl D.C. should meet the criteria for a White House daily press pass. It is a daily independent web publication owned and operated by MediaBistro Inc., a New York-based journalism and publishing industry company. By both design and practice, Fishbowl D.C. is a non-partisan and independent publication that covers the media industry and journalism in Washington, D.C. It, like MediaBistro’s other web properties, is supported by revenue from advertisers and subscribers.
McClellan also stated in this same gaggle that a reporter needs to provide a Social Security Number, date of birth, and pass a background check. Fishbowl has, in previous instances, been cleared by the Secret Service and White House to enter the building, meet the President, and even enter the Oval Office. Given that we know of no reason for any change in our security status, we believe that we should be able to be cleared back into the building.
Thus, despite meeting the publicly available criteria for entrance both as a news organization and as an individual, Fishbowl D.C. has been unable to gain access. The actions of the White House Media Affairs Office this week are a de facto denial of press credentials. Indeed we have thus far been unable to speak with anyone to make our case for covering a briefing. Respectfully we request either a formal denial of our request, along with the reasoning behind such a decision, or at least the chance to speak with a press officer and make the case for admittance.
Our interest in the briefing is to cover one of the greatest institutions in Washington journalism. The press briefings and gaggle, through decades of history, have been central to our understanding of how the presidency functions and the key way that the press interacts with the nation’s leader. Our interest is not in asking a question in the briefing. In fact, if we’re admitted, we will promise not to ask a question. We will not be disruptive. We will not embarrass the press corps, President, or White House staff.
We have no interest in being difficult or causing trouble because we believe that a functioning democracy depends on access of the press to government, and we would not do anything to jeopardize the continued and future access of other journalists. Along those lines, at every step we’ve tried to be as polite and friendly as possible and to demonstrate our goodwill towards the institution of the White House and the Press Office. We greatly appreciate that the Secret Service officers and interns with whom we’ve interacted have, in turn, been eminently friendly and polite in response.
We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and hope to attend a briefing in the near future.
Sincerely,
Fishbowl DC
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