Why Trump’s White House Reporter Ban Matters So Little

It’s petty and annoying, but the only one he hurts is himself.

The most remarkable thing about President Donald Trump’s hissy-fit expulsion of CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from the White House grounds is how difficult it is to tell that they’re gone. That’s not to denigrate these three news outlets, two of which previously employed yours truly. (I was labor policy editor at Politico, and before that I wrote a web column on contract for MS NOW when it was called MSNBC.) My target rather is the press room inside which the White House beat reporters are confined. The dirty little secret of this prestige address has long been that very little news emanates from it.

One could almost state it as a mathematical formula: The value of White House reporting is inversely proportional to its physical distance from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post broke the Watergate story, and then continued to own it, from half a mile away at the old Post headquarters on 15th Street. Maggie Haberman delivers the best Trump coverage of anybody from 225 miles away at the New York Times building on 8th Avenue. One current White House reporter told me that 90 percent of the job consists of working the phones.

It’s been a while since I’ve been inside the place, but the White House press quarters, which once housed a swimming pool, is a claustrophobic warren from which reporters are forbidden to stray. Even a chat with a senior press aide like Stephen Cheung requires an appointment; you can’t get into his upstairs office without one. Lower-level press aides situated in a room behind the famous podium are available, but they aren’t cleared to answer any but the most anodyne question.

The prestigious reporters reduced to a stenographic function within this veal cage feel infantilized and........

© New Republic