How Did White House Press Briefings Go From Daily to Done?

press briefing room. The offer reportedly was rejected by Grisham, who, since taking the job in June of nine, has yet to hold even one formal White House press briefing. Her views, expressed in an interview with the Sinclair Broadcast Group, is that the briefings are unnecessary because reporters get opportunities to put questions to Trump himself, sometimes over the roar of

the presidential helicopter on the White House lawn. For the time being, at least, the Trump administration has abandoned what had been an important part of White House Press Corps routine dating back to the late eighteen hundreds, before the

official position of White House Press secretary even existed. That's when President William McKinley set up a workspace in the White House for reporters and sent his first personal secretary, John Addison Porter, to give the correspondence what the White House Historical Association notes were more or less regular briefings. The White House press briefing gradually evolved into a formal event.

From the time of President Herbert Hoover in the late nineteen twenties and early thirties to Lyndon Johnson's tenure in the mid to late sixties, white House press secretaries held

twice a day briefing sessions in their own offices. According to Martha joint Kumar's book Managing the President's Message, the White House Communications Operation, Richard Nixon, though no fan of the press, still thought the briefings were important enough that he had a swimming pool torn out so that he could convert the space into a meeting room for briefings.

That area is now known as the James Brady Press Briefing Room, in honor of President Ronald Reagan's press secretary, who was seriously wounded during the attempt on Reagan's life. During Bill Clinton's time in the White House in the nineteen nineties, Press Secretary Mike McCurry decided to allow the daily press briefings to be televised. That practice continued until the Trump White House began barring cameras from briefings in

twenty seventeen, before discontinuing them altogether. We spoke via email with FORMERCY and N White House correspondent Dan Lothian, who spent five years covering the Bush and Obama administrations. He said, I think the briefings were useful for a number of reasons. First of all, it was an opportunity to get the White House response or thinking on an issue on camera

rather than a written statement. It allowed us to gang up on them around a question they might have been trying to avoid, showing them dodge and answer is sometimes. The news briefings also put statements on the record for later comparison. Finally, every now and then there would be breaking news, and as happened after a Summa bin Lauden was caught lots of great details, even if some turned

out not to be true. Lothian, who went on to found Little Park Media and to become a visiting caller at the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, recalls that the format for the briefings was fairly constant. He said there was a certain order to who got called on. Briefings always started with the associated press and ended with

a thank you from the Associated Press. Once in a while the Press secretary wouldn't mix it up a bit, but it usually happened around the same time each day, and questions from the first two rows came in order. We also spoke by email with Tom Jones, a senior media writer for the Pointer Institute, a journalism education organization.

He said, while it's true that the president and his representatives often make themselves available in informal settings such as the White House lawn, it's not the same as press briefings. The format of shouting out questions under the sound of a whirling helicopter is not conducive to asking complicated policy questions nor pertinent follow up questions. The frenzied free for all of these. Much too brief informal interviews make it much harder to get into the topics that require nuance

and specifics. It's so much easy for the president to brush aside or ignore questions he doesn't like when he's walking along the White House grounds, when he or one of his representatives are standing behind a podium in a controlled setting, they must face the questions that require long, substantive answers, as opposed to the one or two short

sentences that suffice in those informal settings. That view, essentially is shared by a group of thirteen former White House press secretaries and foreign service and military officials who published an opinion piece on CNN's website in January calling for Trump to restore the regular briefings. In their view, having to prepare for briefings helps the government to run better,

they wrote. The sharing of information known as official guidance, among government officials and agencies helps ensure that an administration speaks with one voice, telling one story, however compelling it might be. Lothian also sees the apparent end of the briefings as unfortunate. He said, it's a valid criticism that

some reporters use briefings to show boat. However, I think when covering the White House, briefings are an important function that allow the public and reporters to maintain daily connections. Sometimes it's routine information, other times an odd question from the back of the room can turn into the story of the day. Even so, Lothian says journalists who cover the administration will find a way to get stories. He said this new normal might be unfortunate, but not paralyzing.

Reporters are in the business of getting information, whether it comes from the mouth of a spokesperson or from sources all across the Beltway. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production

of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other informational topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.