More than 250 self-described guardians of the Fourth Estate, including 94-year-old former CBS News anchor Dan Rather and 92-year-old former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, have signed an open letter demanding that the White House press corps forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Donald Trump at this years White House Correspondents Association Dinner.
According to Mediaite, the signatories are pressing the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) to turn what has traditionally been a light-hearted evening into a pointed political rebuke of the sitting President. They frame their appeal as a defense of constitutional liberties, but the language of the letter reads more like a partisan manifesto than a neutral call for journalistic integrity.
We, the undersigned, call upon the White House Correspondents Association to use the occasion of the White House Correspondents Dinner, to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trumps efforts to trample freedom of the press, the letter read. The authors insist that The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it.
They argue that President Trumps systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press (detailed below) render his presence at such an event a profound contradiction of its purpose. In doing so, they effectively demand that the press abandon its traditional posture of professional distance and instead adopt an openly adversarial stance toward the elected head of the executive branch.
The letter portrays the Presidents media strategy as uniquely dangerous, asserting that The collective weight of the administrations actions retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president. Such sweeping claims, however, gloss over decades of tension between presidents and the press, from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, and suggest a historical amnesia convenient to the letters political thrust.
There is a long tradition of presidents attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, the letter concedes. It immediately adds, But these are not normal times, and this cannot be business as usual with the press standing up to applaud the man who attacks them on a daily basis.
The signatories note that We understand that some journalists plan to wear pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment. They then demand that the WHCA take stronger action by issuing from the podium a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy. Speak forcefully, in front of the man who seeks to undermine our countrys long tradition of an independent, strong, and free press.
They further insist that We also urge the WHCA to reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue and that the Association will not normalize this behavior but instead fight back against any officeholder who has waged systematic war against the journalists whose work the dinner celebrates. Yet by explicitly centering their appeal on opposition to President Trump, they risk turning a nonpartisan principle into a vehicle for anti-Trump activism, blurring the line between reporting and resistance politics.
The letter, which went on to list 22 examples of the Trump administrations attacks on freedom of the press, was signed by a roster heavy with legacy-media veterans. Prominent names include Rather, Donaldson, former anchor Ann Curry, former NBC host Bob Dotson, former ABC News correspondent and Obama official Linda Douglass, and Stephanie Sy, underscoring how much of the institutional press remains committed to confronting this President rather than simply covering him.
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