The Hill’s media reporter Joe Concha called for the White House to limit press corps briefings after Playboy reporter and CNN contributor Brian Karem got into a heated dispute with White House press secretary Sarah Sanders over the administration’s policy on separating migrant children from their parents at the border.
Sanders defended the policy as”enforcing the law.”
“You’re a parent, don’t you have any empathy for what these people are going through?” said Karem.
“They have less than you do. Seriously,” he added.
“I know you want more TV time, but,” Sanders responded just before Karem interrupted her saying that “it’s not about that.”
Concha mentioned that former Clinton and Bush press secretaries Mike McCurry and Ari Fleischer agreed on the need . for limits when they said “we need to take live TV cameras out of these press briefings because obviously these people are doing this to go viral and they want the attention. And they play into President Trump’s argument by the way that this is not only a negative press but a hostile press as well.”
“And then I would even go one step further,” Concha continued. “I would say the White House press corps only gets one day, they get Mondays. You put business reporters in there on Tuesday, so we have more questions about the economy, jobs, things that people care about. Wednesdays go to the foreign press, and that’s it.”
“That would get us a lot more answers and information than the grandstanding we’re seeing,” Concha added.
The demand to cover the White House press briefings since Trump took office has exploded and resulted in a number of outlets that had rarely attended the briefings in the past to gain access via day passes. This has led to lesser-known reporters such as Karem as well as more well-known reporters such as CNN’s Jim Acosta turning the briefings into shouting matches in an attempt to gain more television time while trying to embarrass the Trump administration.
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