 "White House writes to WHCA over inaccurate reporting by major media outlets")
In a rare move, the White House Counsel's Office has written to the White House Correspondents Association expressing concern over the striking inaccuracies in the reporting of several US media outlets on the recent release of a Special Counsel report on the handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden as a private citizen.
In the letter addressed to WHCA president Kelly O'Donnell from NBC News, White House Counsel's Office spokesman Ian Sams listed out the alleged factual inaccuracies in the reporting of several American media outlets, including CNN, CBS News, the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Sams also asked that the letter be distributed through WHCA's email chain that goes out to its members and journalists. The WHCA, however, refused to share the letter through its platform.
It is inappropriate for the White House to utilise internal pool distribution channels, primarily for logistics and the rapid sharing of need-to-know information, to disseminate generalised critiques of news coverage. We will not distribute them going forward, O'Donnell said.
The WHCA welcomes -- and its members surely seek -- further opportunities to ask questions of the president, the White House counsel, or the president's personal attorney on this matter, she said.
The WHCA president said the White House has the contact information of every bureau chief, editor, and reporter covering the beat, and should reach out to them directly with any concerns about their editorial decision-making.
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In its 110-year history, our association has never controlled or policed the journalism that is published or broadcast by our members or their employers, she said.
Sams, in his letter, wrote that at a time when there is so much noise and misinformation landing on people's TVs and smartphones, the job of accurate reporting that properly informs the American people is as critical as ever.
This reality is why I write to express concern about how member organisations have reported on the recent report by Special Counsel Robert Hur, he wrote.
It is understandable that covering the report is challenging. It is nearly 400 pages long and written in a confusing, meandering way. It is not straightforward. And quite notably, under restrictions imposed by the Special Counsel, the White House and the President's personal counsel were unable to brief the media with information or context prior to the report's public release, he said.
It is also clear that the Special Counsel's false and inappropriate personal comments have distracted from due attention to the substance, the letter said.
But those facts stress the importance of careful, patient coverage. Instead, many outlets have reported striking inaccuracies that misrepresent the report's conclusion about the President, and reporters in the White House Briefing Room have asked questions that include false content or are based on false premises, Sams alleged.
He said that headlines and stories wrongly asserted that the report found that the President willfully retained and disclosed classified material.
We all make mistakes, but in the interest of presenting factual information to the public, I am compelled to help illustrate the facts in this matter and urge caution in the future with reporting that either is inattentive to detail or misconstrues the facts and evidence, Sams wrote.
We understand that the members of the WHCA cover challenging and complex topics day in and day out. Your jobs are not easy. But they are important. When significant errors occur in coverage, such as essentially misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of the sitting President, it is critical that they be addressed, Sams said in his four-page letter.
O'Donnell described the letter as misdirected.
As a non-profit organisation that advocates for its members in their efforts to cover the presidency, the WHCA does not, cannot and will not serve as a repository for the government's views of what's in the news. The White House has far reach to make its positions known on the Hur report or any other matter, she said.
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