Post by Admin on Nov 16, 2016 9:47:22 GMT -8
President-elect Donald Trump left reporters in the dark about his whereabouts Tuesday night, continuing a pattern of restricting press access and setting up a dangerous precedent for the press covering the Trump administration.
Trump left his residence at New York’s Trump Tower to have dinner at a restaurant without informing the pool of reporters tasked to cover him.
Trump’s transition team had told the reporters there would be no more news for the day, indicating Trump would remain at Trump Tower for the night. But an hour afterward, Trump was spotted at a restaurant, violating the tradition that media covering the president or president-elect be regularly informed of his movements and schedule.
Spokeswoman Hope Hicks later confirmed that Trump was having dinner with his family and claimed that she had not known about the plans.
Hicks blamed the violation of protocol on the fact that Trump’s transition team has not yet established “a protective pool” of reporters who document the movements of the president for the larger press corps, particularly if there is something unexpected or significant.
Private events, such as family dinners, can be closed to the press, but reporters should be made aware of them.
While documenting something like a dinner might seem trivial, the pool travels with the president because there’s always a possibility something newsworthy might happen in relation to him ― and as the White House Correspondents Association, which oversees the White House Press Corps, has said, Americans need to know about his “whereabouts and well-being in the event of a national crisis.” President Ronald Reagan’s traveling pool documented an assassination attempt on the president in 1981, for example, and President John F. Kennedy’s press pool had special access that helped them cover his assassination in 1963.
Read More
Trump left his residence at New York’s Trump Tower to have dinner at a restaurant without informing the pool of reporters tasked to cover him.
Trump’s transition team had told the reporters there would be no more news for the day, indicating Trump would remain at Trump Tower for the night. But an hour afterward, Trump was spotted at a restaurant, violating the tradition that media covering the president or president-elect be regularly informed of his movements and schedule.
Spokeswoman Hope Hicks later confirmed that Trump was having dinner with his family and claimed that she had not known about the plans.
Hicks blamed the violation of protocol on the fact that Trump’s transition team has not yet established “a protective pool” of reporters who document the movements of the president for the larger press corps, particularly if there is something unexpected or significant.
Private events, such as family dinners, can be closed to the press, but reporters should be made aware of them.
While documenting something like a dinner might seem trivial, the pool travels with the president because there’s always a possibility something newsworthy might happen in relation to him ― and as the White House Correspondents Association, which oversees the White House Press Corps, has said, Americans need to know about his “whereabouts and well-being in the event of a national crisis.” President Ronald Reagan’s traveling pool documented an assassination attempt on the president in 1981, for example, and President John F. Kennedy’s press pool had special access that helped them cover his assassination in 1963.
Read More
