A Note to Members

Press corps,

Thanks to everyone who helped get the congressional picnic open to full pool coverage last week. Several people were involved, and I’d like to take a moment of your workday to explain how they did what they did.

Alerted by Jon Garcia and Wes Barrett, board member Margaret Talev was the first to ask questions about the closed-press event on the schedule as she began her Duty Officer duties last weekend. (Under our new practice, a different WHCA board member is on duty each week to stay on top of the president’s schedule and to advocate for press access every day.) She was able to get the print pool included by the time the schedule went out to the fuller press corps.

She alerted the rest of the board on Tuesday that the photojournalists were not yet included, and board members Jeff Mason and Doug Mills immediately began pressing the case from their position in the traveling pool. Major Garrett wrote an eloquent letter to Josh Earnest. And several members raised the question individually with the press office, notably print pooler Steven Dennis.

In the end, the right thing happened — the full pool was admitted. And with the practice now affirmed both by the press corps and the press office, we have reason to believe it will be easier to make the case on similar events in the near future. The full board underscored that in its monthly meeting with Josh at the end of the week.

I can name several other successes over the past two months as the Duty Officer rotation has hit its stride. Carol Lee got the White House to admit the full pool to the Rose Garden one afternoon to watch the president at work. With that groove cut, we got a repeat performance a few weeks later. Several events have gone from closed-press to full pool. Diplomatically pushing back against the exclusion of the print pool from a photo spray on the road last week, Jeff Mason helped get an expanded pool into the very next photo spray.

As you all know, we are working on putting a fuller set of practices in writing, in the hopes of protecting and preserving them for this press corps and for the journalists who come after us. More than 40 members have contributed their ideas to this document, and our conversations are continuing. We hope that this exercise will help us better understand the standards we all think are important and to push for them as a group.

Still, no matter what kind of progress we make on that front, your vigilance is critical to our constant push for greater access and openness.

It’s one thing to complain around the press room. It’s much more effective to join our voices together in a thoughtful, persuasive call for what we believe is right and fair.

That’s what you did this week, and things went just a little bit better because you did.

Thanks to all.

Christi