White House Correspondents Question Administration on Planegate

The President of the White House Correspondents Association, Jacqui Heinrich sent a letter to the White House press pool, in regards to Trump’s secret plane switch, that left the press as shields as Trump moved to a different plane.

This is email:

I’m sure many of you have seen the Washington Post report about events surrounding President Trump’s travel during the NATO summit last month and the questions the story raises about the pool and its reporting.

I want members to know what WHCA has done since the story was published. Immediately after it broke, we spoke with members who were on the flight and heard from a number of managers and pool chairs about the broader concerns raised by the report, including press safety, the ability of the pool to maintain an independent record of the president’s movements, and the integrity and credibility of pooled reporting.

This afternoon, I had a candid and productive meeting with senior administration officials to convey those concerns directly.

I emphasized that WHCA recognizes the paramount responsibility of the Secret Service to protect the president and that genuine security threats can require extraordinary measures, including circumstances in which operational security limits what can be shared with reporters in real time. At the same time, I advocated strongly for the importance of maintaining independent press coverage of the president and an accurate historical record of his movements.

I also raised the longer-term implications for the credibility of the pool. If circumstances ever result in reporters unwittingly transmitting inaccurate or misleading information, there needs to be a way for the press to correct the record once the security concern has passed. Otherwise, reporters could be left with reasonable questions about whether information they independently observe and report can be relied upon. That would generate unnecessary uncertainty for both the press corps and the White House.

More broadly, I stressed that undermining confidence in the reliability of pool reports carries risks beyond any single incident. In an already conspiratorial information environment, uncertainty about whether independent reporting can be trusted can be exploited by bad actors seeking to sow confusion and undermine confidence in journalism.

I therefore asked the White House to work with us on a protocol for handling extraordinary security circumstances in the future — one that recognizes the Secret Service’s responsibility to respond to genuine threats while protecting press safety, preserving independent coverage of the president, and providing a mechanism to correct the record after the fact when necessary.

We will continue advocating for those principles as discussions continue.