Annual D.C. press/pols dinners should be abandoned to history

[DeepModem Mom]

PR Week: Joke is on the press at annual DC dinners
Media Analysis
Hamilton Nolan PR Week USA Apr 3 2007

Every year, at the invitation of the Gridiron Club, or the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (RTCA), or the White House Correspondents Association, the most famous political reporters in the US disgrace themselves in front of the American public - their wavering supporters.

Every year, the same reporters charged with covering our highest government officials come together to fawn over those same officials and perform skits that make light of our most serious national crises.

At the RTCA dinner on March 28, it was NBC's voraciously tough White House reporter David Gregory reduced to backup dancer for Karl Rove. At the Gridiron Club dinner on March 31, it was columnist Robert Novak impersonating the Vice President while satirizing the Scooter Libby case, which Novak helped initiate.

Every year, the public at large - those not ensconced in the clubby environs of Washington - give a collective sickened wretch when the details of these respected traditional events emerge. During Republican administrations, the clubby atmosphere outrages more liberals. During Democratic administrations, it outrages more conservatives. But even nonpartisan viewers can be outraged that the media, so wedded in rhetoric to transparency and innovation, has not evolved past this backslapping relic of the bad ol' days.

For journalists, whose reputation now hovers around that of used car salesmen, these kinds of events are the worst PR of the year. Barring another Jayson Blair scandal, nothing will disgust readers more this year than accounts of America's most influential reporters chortling over jokes that Dick Cheney is making at their expense. This is not normal source-development work; this is a public spectacle that, fairly or not, comes to exemplify the public perception of a duplicitous, do-nothing media in the nation's capital.

It's clear that politicians themselves see these events as a chance to humanize their image and make friends with key members of the press. But what does the press itself get out of them?...

http://www.prweek.com/us/news/open/free/blogs/648526

[WI_DEM]

1. I agree. This is a tradition best being discontinued.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Agreed. They're too clubby and the skits are often in bad taste or bad humor. nt

[AndyA]

3. These kinds of things are so inappropriate during a time of war.

A waste of time and money by all.

The press hasn't been doing such a hot job reporting the news lately. Perhaps instead of yucking it up with politicians, they should spend a little more time reporting the dirty shenanigans of this misadministration, the worst in the history of our country.

I find this type of bullshit disgraceful when there are so many other things that seriously need attention.

New Orleans, anyone? Is it still there?