#WeeklyAddress June 19-25: Will the White House become silent?

While this #WeeklyAddress may appear quieter than those in the past, RSF is concerned that this is a result of the silence that has been coming from the White House briefing room recently…

Of the White House’s four press briefings last week, only one was held on camera. The rest of the briefings were off-camera and banned live audio recording. This follows a trend away from press access in the Trump White House; while Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s briefings initially pulled in millions of viewers, in recent months press briefings have been less frequent, and with fewer questions addressed. In the past two weeks, only two briefings have been on-camera.

When asked on Friday why the briefing was off-camera, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said: “It’s great for us to come out here and have a substantive discussion about policies. I don’t think that the be-all and end-all is whether it’s on television or not.”

Though news organizations appear to be abiding by the White House’s new rules, many are doing so with reluctance. CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta expressed his concerns following June 19’s off-camera, no-audio briefing. “I don’t know why everybody is going along with this,” Acosta said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.It just feels like we’re sort of slowly but surely being dragged into a new normal in this country where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions.”

The Washington Post has been keeping a close eye on the Trump administration’s dwindling interactions with the press. In a June 13 article, The Post reported: “During Trump’s first 100 days in office, Spicer and Sanders held 53 official briefings and ‘gaggles,’ informal, untelevised Q&As with small groups of reporters — a rate of about once every two days. In the 43 days since then, just 15 such sessions have been held, or once every three days. The briefings are getting briefer, too: Early on, Spicer engaged with reporters for an hour or longer; during his May 30 briefing, he took questions for just 11 minutes.”

Since early on in his term, President Donald Trump has been cold to the media, skipping the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and participating in few interviews. In a tweet on May 12, he wrote: “...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”