White House Correspondents' Association

The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the president of the United States. The WHCA was founded on February 25, 1914, by journalists in response to an unfounded rumor that a United States congressional committee would select which journalists could attend press conferences of President Woodrow Wilson.

The WHCA operates independently of the White House. Among the more notable issues handled by the WHCA are the credentialing process, access to the president and physical conditions in the White House press briefing rooms. Its most high-profile activity is the annual White House Correspondents' dinner, which is traditionally attended by the president and covered by the news media. Except for Donald Trump, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner, beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Association leadership, 2023–2024

The leadership of the White House Correspondents' Association includes:

• Officers
  • President: Kelly O'Donnell, NBC News
  • Vice President: Eugene Daniels, Politico
  • Treasurer: Weijia Jiang, CBS News
  • Secretary: Sara Cook, CBS News
• Board members
  • Andrew Harnik, Associated Press
  • Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News
  • Justin Sink, Bloomberg News
  • Courtney Subramanian, Los Angeles Times
  • Karen Travers, ABC News
• Executive Director
  • Steven Thomma

Association presidents

White House press room

The WHCA is responsible for assigned seating in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House.

White House Correspondents' dinner

The WHCA's annual dinner, begun in 1921, has become a Washington, D.C. tradition, and is traditionally attended by the president and vice president. Except for Donald Trump, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner, beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924. The dinner is traditionally held on the evening of the last Saturday in April at the Washington Hilton.

Until 1962, the dinner was open only to men, even though WHCA's membership included women. At the urging of Helen Thomas, President John F. Kennedy refused to attend the dinner unless the ban on women was dropped.

Prior to World War II, the annual dinner featured singing between courses, a homemade movie, and an hour-long, post-dinner show with big-name performers. Since 1983, the featured speaker has usually been a comedian, with the dinner taking on the form of a comedy roast of the president and his administration.

The dinner also funds scholarships for gifted students in college journalism programs.

Many annual dinners have been cancelled or downsized due to deaths or political crises. The dinner was cancelled in 1930 due to the death of former president William Howard Taft; in 1942, following the United States' entry into World War II; and in 1951, over what President Harry S. Truman called the "uncertainty of the world situation." In 1981, Ronald Reagan did not attend because he was recuperating after the attempted assassination the previous month, but he did phone in and told a joke about the shooting.

During his presidency, Donald Trump did not attend the dinners in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Trump indicated that he might attend in 2019 since this dinner did not feature a comedian as the featured speaker. However, on April 5, 2019, he announced that he again would not attend, calling the dinner "so boring, and so negative," instead hosting a political rally that evening in Wisconsin. On April 22, Trump ordered a boycott of the dinner, with White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley assembling the agencies' chiefs of staff to issue a directive that members of the administration not attend. However, some members of the administration attended pre- and post-dinner parties.

Dinner criticisms

The WHCD has been increasingly criticized as an example of the coziness between the White House press corps and the administration. The dinner has typically included a skit, either live or videotaped, by the sitting U.S. president in which he mocks himself, for the amusement of the press corps. The press corps, in turn, hobnobs with administration officials, even those who are unpopular and are not regularly cooperative with the press. Increasing scrutiny by bloggers has contributed to added public focus on this friendliness.

After the 2007 dinner, New York Times columnist Frank Rich implied that the Times would no longer participate in the dinners. Rich wrote that the dinner had become "a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era" because it "illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows".

Other criticism has focused on the amount of money actually raised for scholarships, which has decreased over the past few years.

The dinners have drawn increasing public attention, and the guest list grows "more Hollywood". The attention given to the guest list and entertainers often overshadows the intended purpose of the dinner, which is to "acknowledge award-winners, present scholarships, and give the press and the president an evening of friendly appreciation". This has led to an atmosphere of coming to the event only to "see and be seen". This usually takes place at pre-dinner receptions and post-dinner parties hosted by various media organizations, which are often a bigger draw and can be more exclusive than the dinners themselves.

The public airings of the controversies around the dinner from the mid-2000s onward gradually focused concern about the nature of the event. While interest in the event from entertainers, journalists, and political figures was high during the Obama administration, by the period of the Trump administration, interest gradually slowed in attending, especially after President Trump announced he would not attend, nor his staff. Business related to the weekend event slowed considerably, including at hotels, high-end restaurants, salons, caterers, and limo companies. During the Trump administration, some media companies stopped hosting parties, while other of the roughly 25 events held during the three-day period gained more prominence as signs of social status. By 2019, the dinner and associated parties had returned somewhat to their previous nature as networking and media functions, with packed houses of media industry employees and Washington political figures.

After the April 30, 2022, dinner, several attendees, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken tested positive for COVID-19. However, no cases of serious illness were reported as a result of the dinner.

List of dinners

Gallery

Awards

Note: Award years represent the date the work was published/broadcast, which is always one year before the prize was awarded.

The Aldo Beckman Memorial Award

Established in 1981 in memory of Aldo Beckman (1934–1980), the "late Chicago Tribune Washington bureau chief, a past president of the association.... Given annually to a Washington reporter 'who personifies the journalistic excellence as well as the personal qualities exemplified by Mr. Beckman, an award-winning White House correspondent.'" Awarded for overall excellence in White House coverage.

Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure

The award was established in 1970 as the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for outstanding examples of deadline reporting. (Smith died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1970.) The award was renamed in 2022 after the WHCA determined that Smith had supported excluding Black and female journalists from membership in the National Press Club and from attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability

A $10,000 prize to "recognize an individual or newsgathering team for coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance in line with the human and professional qualities exemplified by the late Katharine Graham, the distinguished former publisher of The Washington Post. Debuted in 2020.

Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage by Visual Journalists

$1,000 "award recognizes a video or photojournalist for uniquely covering the presidency from a journalistic standpoint, either at the White House or in the field. This could be breaking news, a scheduled event or feature coverage." Debuted in 2020.

Discontinued awards

The Edgar A. Poe Memorial Award

Named in honor of the distinguished correspondent Edgar Allen Poe (1906–1998), a former WHCA president unrelated to the American fiction writer of the nearly identical name. Funded by the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Newhouse Newspapers, the award honored excellence in news coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance to the American people. The Edgar A. Poe Memorial Award was presented from 1990 to 2019, when it was replaced by the Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability and the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage by Visual Journalists.

Notable past winners of the award include Rochelle Sharpe, Marjie Lundstrom, Michael Tackett, Russell Carollo, Cheryl Reed, Michael Isikoff, Sam Roe, Sean Naylor, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, Marcus Stern, Megan Twohey, David Fahrenthold, and Norah O'Donnell.

Raymond Clapper Memorial Award

Named in honor of Raymond Clapper (1892-1944) and given "to a journalist or team for distinguished Washington reporting." The award was presented from 1944 to 2003, usually at the WHCA dinner (although in the period 1951–1965 it was presented at the American Society of News Editors annual dinner).

In 2004, the award passed to the Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards. Under Scripps Howard, the Washington Reporting Raymond Clapper Award was presented until 2011, at which point it was discontinued.

Notable past winners of the Raymond Clapper Award included Ernie Pyle, Nicholas Lemann, Clark R. Mollenhoff, James Reston, Joseph Albright, Morton Mintz, Adam Liptak, Helene Cooper, Jean Heller, Newbold Noyes Jr., Thomas Lunsford Stokes, Tom Squitieri, Marcus Stern, Susan Feeney, Doris Fleeson, James Polk, James V. Risser, and William Neikirk.

See also

• Gridiron Club
• Radio and Television Correspondents' Association
• Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner
• Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner
• National Press Club
• Parliamentary Press Gallery
• List of dining events

Notes

References

External links

• White House Correspondents' Association
• White House Correspondents' Association Dinner Archived May 2, 2011, at the Wayback Machine at C-SPAN