It may seem like an odd time to party in Washington. But this weekend, political journalists and politicos will gather for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (and a slew of late-night soirees and boozy brunches).
The media ritual can “serve as a barometer for the press and White House relations,” says Hive editor Michael Calderone on this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, appearing alongside host and Vanity Fair editor in chief Radhika Jones and executive editor Claire Howorth. Over the years, the weekend has also had a significant cultural impact, the most consequential dinner likely being in 2011 when Barack Obama addressed birtherism rumors and took shots at Donald Trump. Whether or not that speech is why Trump is now president, it directly “contributes to the origin story of Donald Trump as president. Somebody who had consistently felt like the establishment in Washington mocked him, was against him,” says Calderone.
Trump, of course, has no plans to attend the event this year. The dinner also comes at a time when the traditional roles of the White House Correspondents’ Association are being threatened and even taken away by the White House, and as the president continues to berate and attack the press and the First Amendment more broadly.
Before he even began his second term, Trump secured a $15 million payment from ABC News as part of a defamation lawsuit. He also still has lawsuits pending against CBS, The Des Moines Register, the journalist Bob Woodward, and the Pulitzer Prize Board. The effects will likely result in a lot of press scaling back their coverage, says Howorth. “Because a lot of outlets can’t afford to engage in these battles.” It’s also a matter of bandwidth as the media landscape today is much more fractured than it used to be, says Jones. “The lawsuits themselves are costly and expensive, but so is the labor that goes into simply conducting a legal review of your journalism and making sure that everything is up to snuff.”
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