{"id":16995,"date":"2019-04-29T20:11:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T20:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/04\/29\/the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-an-allegory-for-washingtons-most-dysfunctional-relationship\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:42:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:42:43","slug":"the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-an-allegory-for-washingtons-most-dysfunctional-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/opinions\/2019\/04\/29\/the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-an-allegory-for-washingtons-most-dysfunctional-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House correspondents\u2019 dinner: An allegory for Washington\u2019s most dysfunctional relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">April 27th was the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner in Washington, D.C. For the third year, our company had a table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was a mellow night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obviously, it\u2019s not the hot ticket it once was. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has opted out of attending \u2013 this year ordering that no others from the administration do so either. Hollywood elite no longer shows. And this year the tradition of a comedian as headliner was scrapped, replaced by Ron Chernow, biographer of American presidents. An admirable choice \u2013 but contributing to a very different atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like I said, it was a mellow night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every journalist has an opinion on the shift. Some say it\u2019s transformed into a true celebration of the press corps, not a red-carpet event for celebrities that fancy themselves political activists and not a platform for the hilarious but sometimes raunchy roast of politicians and cable news networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Others say it\u2019s simply one more casualty of the toxic relationship between Trump and the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both are right. And neither event \u2013 the pre-Trump extravaganza or the more subdued post-Trump affair \u2013 reflects what I would describe as the ideal balance of healthy tension and mutual respect. It occured to me this year that the dinner is the perfect allegory of the notoriously imperfect dynamic between the press and the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn\u2019t always view the relationship this way. In 2015, not long after I came on board as editor of Federal Times, I wrote a column as part of our 50-year anniversary celebration. It was called, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.federaltimes.com\/smr\/50-years-federal-times\/2015\/10\/21\/media-and-the-feds-50-years-of-civility-50-years-of-contention\/\" target=_blank>Media and the feds: 50 years of civility, 50 years of contention.\u201d<\/a> In that column I reflected on the shifts in the relationship over recent decades and concluded that we landed at an interesting and healthy place: where government and media have both a mutual respect and a mutual skepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Four years later, that\u2019s longer true. And using the correspondents\u2019 dinner as a barometer, maybe it wasn\u2019t even true then. The last dinner attended by President Barack Obama came roughly six months after I wrote that column and, while I was not there, most coverage of the dinner reflected a comradery. Liberal media and liberal comedy were, and perhaps usually are, easy on the rather liberal commander-in-chief. All was in good fun. The digs were tame. That skepticism that I thought existed was nearly absent. Everyone had a good laugh together. At least that\u2019s the way it appeared in coverage of the dinner the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fast forward to the Trump era, where the press and the president, quite literally, can\u2019t be in the same room together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neither scenario is ideal. One of my fellow editors has long found the whole concept of the correspondents\u2019 dinner preposterous, arguing that it shouldn\u2019t even exist. I\u2019m not there yet. I figure, if my reporters can travel with government officials around the globe and maintain their good editorial judgement, then certainly we should be able to have a meal together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the whole affair doesn\u2019t have to necessarily be quite so \u2013 mellow. But it doesn\u2019t have to be so chummy either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like I said in 2015, the healthiest and most productive relationship under the circumstances would be where government and media have that mutual respect and a mutual skepticism. Unfortunately, we just can\u2019t seem to figure out a way to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neither the pre-Trump extravaganza or the more subdued post-Trump affair reflects what I would describe as the ideal balance of healthy tension and mutual respect that should in theory typify the White House-media relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":53351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":26,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,31,33,26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2503],"class_list":["post-16995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-opinions"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"TRXGHB6MZ5ECXA6MKQGYSCFFEU","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinions\/2019\/04\/29\/the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-an-allegory-for-washingtons-most-dysfunctional-relationship\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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