5 takeaways:
➀ The Biden press operation is likely to resemble Obama’s. Under President Donald Trump, White House press management has been chaotic. Reporters had to contend with canceled briefings, conflicting messages, and a president who often contradicted what his officials had been saying. While President-elect Joe Biden has historically been an unstructured and undisciplined candidate and politician, his press operation is not. “We’ve seen what he was like and what his team was like during the campaign and now during the transition,” said Anita Kumar of Politico. “And it’s very controlled, very disciplined. They have a message they want to get out and they’re getting it out, and really not deviating from that.”
➁ With discipline comes a downside: Less access. The Trump White House has been famously leaky, with reporters able to find sources for a range of stories at all hours of the day. “There are a ton more true leaks inside the Trump administration than there ever were inside the Obama/Biden White House or that most of us expect to see inside the Biden/Harris White House,” said Margaret Talev of Axios and CNN. While there have been some leaks from the Biden transition team, Talev noted that “leak as sport, leak as expectation and leak as a form of self-preservation” isn’t likely to be as prevalent under Biden as it has been under Trump.
➂ Above all else, a press secretary should not lie. And most don’t. George Condon of National Journal has covered the White House since 1982; he’s about to work with his 20th press secretary. Condon recounted an episode from the Reagan administration when Larry Speakes invented quotes for President Ronald Reagan and passed them off as true. The quotes – what Speakes said Reagan had told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – went down in the annals of the era as true. Only later did Speakes admit he made them up. “A good press secretary does not lie,” Condon said. “There’s one press secretary who told me, ‘There are about 40 ways of saying “No comment,” and I know them all.’”
➃ Be careful what you label a lie. The Washington Post, CNN, PolitiFact and other news organizations have documented each false and misleading statement Trump has made during his four years in office. As of December 2020, it topped 23,000, by the Post’s tally. But whether a false statement is a “lie” is in the mind of the speaker. While some news outlets have liberally labeled the president’s statements as “lies,” NPF’s panelists shied away from doing so. “We have not used ‘He lied,’” said Paul Reid of CBS News. Instead, she has looked to outsiders – such as judges ruling on Trump election cases – to adjudicate.
➄ White House reporters love to read – and shared their recommendations. Panelists had a long list of books to help reporters new to the White House beat: Joe Biden’s “Promises to Keep” and “Promise Me, Dad”; Kamala Harris’ “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey”; Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father”; David Plouffe’s “The Audacity to Win”; Bret Baier’s “Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission”; and Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s “The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III.” George Condon said he has read every book written by a White House press secretary and found them more informative than most presidential memoirs. For books about the Trump era, panelists recommended Brian Stelter’s “Hoax” and Major Garrett’s “Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride.”
