White House press releases have become “purely political,” says Correspondents Association president Jonathan Karl

07/14/2020 USA


But lately, press releases by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany “have started to look purely political,” White House Correspondents Association president Jonathan Karl told Brian Stelter of CNN on Sunday in “Trusted Sources”.
Karl’s comments follow an opinion piece he published in the Washington Post on Saturday titled: “It is the duty of the White House press secretary to hold briefings. But not so.” He said Sunday that he advocates for changes in briefings before his term as head of the Correspondents Association ends this week.

The press secretary “has the job of informing the public by informing reporters that the public uses it to get information,” said Karl, who has covered briefings for four presidents and 14 different press secretaries.

“The press secretary serves the president’s liking, but this is a different job,” he said. “She is not the spokesperson for a campaign, she is not the spokesperson for a political party. She is the spokesperson for the executive branch of the United States federal government. It is a different job, it is not a purely political job, and those briefings they have begun to seem purely political. “

CNN has contacted the White House press secretary’s office for comment.

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In his op-ed on Saturday, Karl referred to a White House press conference last week during which journalists asked McEnany about a tweet from President Donald Trump that seemed to link NASCAR’s decision to remove the images. of the Confederate flag of all races and events with lower scores.

Trump tweeted: “@BubbaWallace apologized to all those great NASCAR drivers and officers who came to his aid, stood by him and were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to discover that it was all just another HOAX? That Flag’s decision has caused the lowest ratings EVER! “

During the briefing, Karl and other reporters asked McEnany to clarify Trump’s position on the Confederate flag and to explain whether Trump thought NASCAR’s decision to ban the flag was a mistake.

In response, McEnany said reporters were taking the president’s tweet out of context and emphasized that the tweet was really about the FBI’s findings in its investigation of a knot found in NASCAR driver team Bubba Wallace’s garage, which he concluded. that Wallace was not the victim. of a hate crime.

“You are focusing on a word at the bottom of a tweet that is completely out of context,” McEnany said during the briefing.

For Karl, the interaction was an example of the press secretary “denying the president’s own words and not answering legitimate questions about something he had done hours before,” he wrote in his opinion piece.

On Sunday, Karl said he believes that regular briefings are needed, but asked that they be changed. “This has to be an aberration, it can’t go on like this,” he said.

“I think the person who is the spokesperson for the executive branch of our government has a responsibility to appear before the press and answer questions regularly,” Karl said. “But I also think that they should be informative, that they cannot be purely political.”

Karl also expressed concern that the reports have begun to be used to “undermine the press, not inform the press.”

“There was a briefing … where he looked at the journalists in the room, I was in the room and he said, ‘people in this room desperately want to keep churches and places of worship closed,'” Karl said, referring to a briefing in late May. “As if reporters somehow wanted to see churches closed … I hope it changes course. I’m glad there are briefings, but I think those briefings shouldn’t be purely political.”

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