Washington, DC – Donald Trump, whose political career has been built in part on deriding the United States press, is set to attend his first White House Correspondents' Dinner as president on Saturday.
The event continues a decades-long tradition dating back to 1921. Still, the black-tie gala held in Washington remains a divisive event. For years, detractors have argued its chummy approach to the presidency risks blurring the independence of the press corps.
Trump himself is one of the dinner's critics. Until this year, he had refused to attend, appearing poised to defy a tradition of sitting presidents dining at least once with the press corps during the annual event. Since launching his first presidential campaign, Trump has taken a bellicose approach towards the media, issuing personal attacks on journalists and lawsuits against news organizations for coverage he deems unfair.
His presence on Saturday has only heightened questions about the event's role in the modern era. Trump previously declined five invitations across his first and second terms. His inaugural visit has been accompanied by changes to the dinner's format: most notably, the longstanding practice of having a comedian perform has been nixed.
Journalist organizations and rights groups have called on the event's host, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), to send a "forthright message" to the president about protecting freedom of the press. "We also urge the WHCA to reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue," a coalition of groups wrote in an open letter.
Saturday will be the first time Trump attends the correspondents' dinner as president, but not his first time attending the event. He was present as a private citizen at the 2011 dinner, years before launching his first successful presidential campaign. At the time, Trump had begun pushing the so-called "birtherism" theory: the racist claim that then-President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and had faked his US birth certificate.
It is tradition for the sitting president to speak at the event, and Obama seized the moment to lob barbs at Trump's conspiracy theories and his nascent political career. Obama poked fun at Trump's work hosting the reality television show The Apprentice and displayed a mock-up of a "Trump White House Resort and Casino". Comedian Seth Meyers also took aim at Trump's birtherism claims. Trump sat stone-faced in the audience, with several confidants later crediting the night as a major motivator for his 2016 presidential bid.
The White House Correspondents' Association was launched in 1914, as a response to threats by then-President Woodrow Wilson to do away with presidential news conferences. Comedians became mainstays of the annual dinner in the early 1980s. Defenders of the event argue that the presence of comedians helps celebrate free speech and ground the black-tie proceedings.
But since Trump first declined to attend the event after taking office in 2017, that norm has shifted. Michelle Wolf's no-holds-barred performance in 2018 is often seen as a breaking point. She seized upon Trump's past statements appearing to praise sexual assault and charged that Trump did not have a "big enough spine to attend" the event. While praised by fellow comedians, her performance divided the White House press corps.
The following year, the association invited historian Ron Chernow to speak. The dinner did not have another comedian until 2022, during the administration of Joe Biden. Last year, the association abruptly cancelled a planned performance by comedian Amber Ruffin. This year, a mentalist, Oz Pearlman, is set to perform instead of a comedian.
The Society of Professional Journalists, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and The National Association of Black Journalists are among the organizations urging colleagues to make a statement. In an open letter, they said the actions by the Trump administration "represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president". They pointed to limiting White House and Pentagon press pools, FCC threats, immigration enforcement actions against non-citizen journalists, and an FBI raid of a Washington Post reporter's home.
The Trump administration has rejected allegations that it treats journalists unfairly. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has regularly touted Trump as the "most transparent" president in US history. Journalists have called on the WHCA to go further and make it clear that it will not "normalise" Trump's behaviour — "but instead fight back against any officeholder who has waged systematic war against the journalists whose work the dinner celebrates".
Source: www.aljazeera.com