Transcript
George Condon: Well, the thing I love most about being a White House correspondent is being present when history is being made.
Teri Finneman: Welcome to Journalism History, a podcast that rips out the pages of your history books to reexamine the stories you thought you knew and the ones you were never told.
I’m Teri Finneman, a professional journalism historian, guiding you through our own drafts of history, with audio editing by Cami Koons.
Well, podcast fans, it’s been nearly two years, but I’m back. I originally started this show in 2018, at a time when there were concerns that journalism history was being swept aside for the latest fads in technology in journalism schools. I wanted people to remember that our work matters. Now, with history under constant attack this past year in the United States, I’m determined more than ever to bring historical work to the forefront. As I get the lights turned back on around here, look for new episodes from me to drop the first of each month with possibly more down the road. For now, it’s good to be back home. And now, on with the show.
In 1914, the White House Correspondents’ Association launched, “For the purpose of promoting the interest and welfare of the newspaper men who are regularly assigned to cover the White House.” With 11 charter members that initially included United Press, the New York Sun, the New York World, and the Associated Press, the group grew to 30 members within its first year. In the century since, the organization has played a critical role in providing oversight of the presidency. Its work and presence has especially drawn attention in the past year, including when a gunman targeted its annual dinner this past spring.
In this episode, we examine the history of this notable association with today’s guest, George Condon, Jr., a White House correspondent for National Journal, with a longtime interest in the history of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
George, welcome to the show. The White House Correspondents’ Association was created in 1914. What happened at that time to prompt the organization to form?
George Condon: Well, I wish I could say that they had high hopes of freedom of the press and the First Amendment or even the idea of having fun. The sad truth is they were just scared because President Wilson had invented the presidential press conference, they were enjoying it and they had screwed up. You weren’t allowed to quote the president from the press conference then. And somebody in 1913 did quote him with some rather sensitive comments about the civil war going on in Mexico. And it embarrassed him. And the president was furious, so they calmed him down. And then in January of 1914, they did it again. And this time the White House was serious about ending the press conferences or even worse in the mind of the White House correspondents, letting the reporters on Capitol Hill dictate who could attend the press conferences. And they did not want that.
So, on February 9th, 11 of them got together in the White House briefing room or press area — it wasn’t really a briefing room then — and created the association. And that solved the problem of who could attend the president’s press conferences, because these were so new. And you had what in that day they called tipsters, people who were attending the press conference just to get things they could use in the stock market to make a killing and not real reporters. And so, by creating the Correspondents’ Association and taking complete control over who could attend them, that solved both problems. So, that was behind the creation.
Teri Finneman: Great. Let’s talk about the dinner. In 1921, the first White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was held. This was an interesting time, because now Warren Harding, a former newspaper publisher himself was president. Listeners can listen to our prior episode about Harding’s newspaper career in Episode 63. But Harding never attended the dinner. So, it was actually Calvin Coolidge who became the first president to attend in 1924. I found a news article in The Evening Star reporting that Coolidge used the event to take a jab at Congress, criticizing its incompetence at getting anything done. So, nothing is new in history as we always say. So, talk about those dinners and some other memorable moments throughout history.
George Condon: Well, it’s great that you mentioned Harding, because when World War I came, Wilson stopped doing the press conferences. And then he was sick, so he didn’t do them. So, the Correspondents’ Association basically ceased to exist, except on paper. And then you had Warren Harding’s campaign, which was all conducted from his home in Marion, Ohio. And the correspondents loved Harding. They were buddies. He was a publisher, they were reporters. And they started having a dinner in Marion called the Order of the Elephant Dinner. And then he was elected. And when he got in there, they decided, why don’t we kind of recreate the Order of the Elephant Dinner with our buddy, Warren Harding? So, they had that first one in May of 1921, May 7th. 50 people at the Arlington Hotel. And they did that again in ’22. And then he died in 1923 before he could attend a dinner.
And Coolidge came in and they had that one in 1924. And I wish I could say that The Evening Star story captured the event, but it didn’t. That was a case of a reporter struggling to find something to write about, because the truth is that for all his reputation of being silent Cal, he gave a long, discursive, cliched, terrible speech that never ended at that dinner. He talked about his childhood newspaper reading. He talked about how he got criticized by reporters in Massachusetts. He talked about his press conferences. And then he got to the point of the speech, which was this dissertation on the separation of powers. And that’s where he got into Congress and so on. And the funny thing is it worked out great for the correspondents, because it was such a terrible speech that they made a rule that presidents of the United States would not give speeches at future dinners.
And that worked out great because presidents loved going to the dinner and not having to give the speech, because they got really good entertainment, they could enjoy themselves, and they didn’t have to talk. And that held with two exceptions. Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the week of the dinner, asked for permission to address the nation from the dinner. And they didn’t know how to react, but they couldn’t say no to the president. So, he gave a speech March of 1941, the Lend-Lease bill had just passed, in which it made news in Tokyo, in Berlin, around the world. It was quoted because it basically said, “United States is going to be in this war and it’s going to be pretty serious and this is what’s coming.” And then in ’43, he used the dinner to again address the nation, this is through a radio hookup, on an update on how the war was going.
So, those were two pretty serious consequential speeches. But other than that, the no speech by presidents held until 1961. And John F. Kennedy only spoke for three minutes, but he shattered all the precedents because he was genuinely funny. And that put pressure on every president after that. You’ve got to be funny. You’ve got to give a speech. But the anti-Coolidge, no speech rule basically held from 1924 until 1961.
Teri Finneman: I absolutely love that story. I’m a big fan of Grace Coolidge and so I love hearing new Coolidge stories. So, you mentioned John Kennedy. My next question relates to that. It wasn’t until 1944 that the first Black reporter, Harry McAlpin, was allowed to be a White House correspondent and 1962 until women were allowed to attend the dinner, after John Kennedy said he wouldn’t attend unless women reporters could also go. How has the association evolved with who is able to belong over its history?
George Condon: Well, it’s fair to say, kicking and screaming. They didn’t want women… It’s different with women. Women were full members of the association. They paid dues. They were at the press conferences. They were at F.D.R.’s first one. They were at Harding’s press conferences. Women were never kept out of covering anything. They were never kept out of being members, but they were not allowed to go to the dinner. Even though they were full dues paying members, they couldn’t go to the dinner. Merriman Smith said the dinners were too bawdy for women’s delicate ears. And he was one of the leaders in fighting that. And it wasn’t until ’61 and [Bonnie Angelo] of Newsday was president of the Women’s Press Club, and she did an interesting thing. She went to Pierre Salinger’s mother, who was a French journalist writer, and said, “Your son’s not letting women at this dinner.” And she was horrified. That would never happen in Paris.
And she gave her son this holy hell and he went to President Kennedy and said, “Women aren’t allowed at this.” And that’s when Kennedy said, “Well, okay, if you want me at the dinner next year, you’re going to have to let women in.” And so, at the ’62 dinner, you had 64 women out of the 1,500 there. And then it grew to 71 the next year. And then by 2013, you had more than 1,000 women there. It’s close to 50/50 now, but that helped because they wanted the president to come to the dinner and he wasn’t going to come.
Teri Finneman: So, the dinner is what the public tends to hear the most about, but that’s just one night. Talk about what the White House Correspondents’ Association does the rest of the year and how its mission has and hasn’t changed over time.
George Condon: Well, when I was president, I always use the term, phrase, that I saw our role as being the shop steward for White House correspondents. And it’s usually the fights you’re in are not very glamorous. I remember one. I was the advanced pooler before President Clinton was going to go to the Netherlands. And you’re looking at where the sites are going to be. And they were going to put us in a airport hangar for three hours and there was no access to bathrooms. So, I ended up fighting for an hour to get the site changed so that we had access to bathrooms. Now, nobody’s going to write a book about fighting for bathrooms, but if you’re actually covering a president and you’re stuck for three hours there, that’s something you have to think about. So, we think about those details, in addition to the fights that get more attention.
One of the issues when I was president was they closed the access to what’s called the upper press office. There’s two levels of press office. Lower press has the briefing room and some lower offices, deputy and assistant press secretaries. Upper press has the press secretary’s office and you’re just steps from the Oval Office. And Clinton had cut that off on inauguration day and took us till Memorial Day to get it reopened. We also had the travel office fight, where they fired the travel office. And that affected the arrangements for all our travel. So, you’re involved in all those things.
In the era of Trump, the issues are much more high level. We’re fighting for them to actually tell us the truth on things. And that’s not something we usually had to fight on, but throwing AP out of the pool and who’s there covering. So, I do not envy today’s leaders. I thought we had big fights in the ’90s, but it’s nothing compared to what they’re fighting now.
Teri Finneman: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about your time back in the ’90s. As you mentioned, you’re a past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 1993 to ’94. What were some of your other priorities as president of the group during the Clinton administration?
George Condon: Well, every new administration tries to reinvent the wheel, reinvent briefings. And they started out with a two-headed monster of Dee Dee Myers as press secretary, but she wasn’t really briefing; George Stephanopoulos as communications director was briefing. And it took a long time to sort that out. Again, that took until Memorial Day, when they brought David Gergen in to basically be the adult in the room, even though he was a Republican. And so, we had that and relations were very, very bad. And the White House reached out. They had a picnic on the south lawn in which I was invited and so on.
All of this with sitting with Clinton, trying to make peace because it didn’t serve anybody to have a constant war going on. And we did work out good working relationships. Their suspicions of how we… They thought we were going to stalk the president’s daughter. And I had to spend a lot of time persuading them that we really weren’t going to watch her go to school every day and so on. And they found out a lot of their misconceptions were wrong. And we ended up with pretty solid good working relationship, but it took a lot of work to get there.
Teri Finneman: Give us an inside look at what it’s like being part of the press pool when you travel with the president, and how that has and hasn’t changed during your decades covering the White House.
George Condon: Well, I mean, it’s great being in the pool. I mean, sometimes it surprises you. I was pool when President Clinton was in Kansas City, and we were supposed to just have an uneventful ride back to the airport. And instead, he stopped and spent several hours… There are two museums next to each other in Kansas City. One is the jazz museum and the other is the Negro Baseball Museum. And Clinton had such amazing curiosity. Got him in trouble later on, but I mean, he wanted to see things and learn things. And he went through both of those and he kept… Because the first time I had ever interviewed him was we were both college students at Georgetown. And I was writing for The Hoya and he was head of the student athletic commission, so it was a football story for a school paper. So, he knew me and he kept calling me into the picture to show me things at the museum.
And of course, I knew the photographers didn’t want me in the picture, so I’m trying to talk to him, but keep my distance so I’m not crowding the picture. And then you have more important things.
But you asked how it’s changed. We don’t have as much access today as we did then. The idea that a president would call the pooler over to show something when he was touring a museum is laughable now. And the biggest change is they have infused the pool with what you’d have to call true believers, people who are allegedly reporters, but are there basically just to ask very, very friendly questions about… “Mr. President, why is it you’re so incredibly handsome? And I have a follow-up question.” That’s the biggest change in the pool today. You have to contend with that when you’re trying to ask a serious question.
Teri Finneman: When people think of the presidency and the White House press, certainly Richard Nixon and Watergate come to mind from a historical perspective, but let’s take maybe a lesser-known approach. Which president do you think has had the best relationship with the White House press?
George Condon: Well, you start with the fact that every president in American history, starting with George Washington, absolutely hated the coverage that they got. Even before, I mean, there really wasn’t anything that you considered a White House correspondent until McKinley, because the news was all made on Congress. That’s where reporters focused. But even before they were called White House correspondents, when they wrote something about the president, presidents hated it. Look at the writings. Washington has said some things on that. But some of them have better relationships. In my time, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford have had pretty good relationships, good working relationships. F.D.R. certainly had his fights with some, but he had a very good working relationship with the reporters that covered him. John F. Kennedy.
George H.W. Bush blamed us for his defeat in 1992. And he used to wear a hat that said, “Annoy the media, reelect Bush.” And I was the pool reporter when he went to Somalia, after he lost, New Year’s Eve. And we were staying in the same Navy — the USS Tripoli — and I would bump into him. And he wanted to be mad at me because I represented the press. And he was mad at the press, but he was such a decent human being and such a gentleman, and he liked me. So, you could see that tug of war every time I bumped into him. He would, “I don’t want to give you anything, but are you sleeping well?” So, it’s different. Some are more professional than others.
Teri Finneman: You’ve interviewed eight presidents and reported from 88 countries. What are some of your other favorite memories as a White House correspondent?
George Condon: Well, the thing I love most about being a White House correspondent is being present when history is being made. And along those lines, I mean, being there, Reagan’s trip to China in 1984, I mean, you knew history was being made. You knew how important it was. Being there in ’93 when Arafat and Rabin had their famous handshake after decades of, “We will not shake hands with the PLO.” And Clinton brought them together. And you could not be on the south lawn that day and not have a palpable sense of the history. Or what I would consider one of the best single days any president ever had was the Friday after 9/11, when George W. Bush went to New York, met with the survivors, the family of those who had lost, and stood on the rubble, and had his famous ad lib about the people who did this will hear me. I mean, that type of history makes the job worthwhile, all the small irritants worthwhile.
Teri Finneman: Moving into more recent history, this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner will be remembered for the gunmen caught near the ballroom. Were you at the event that evening and can you share the impact-
George Condon: I was. I was.
Teri Finneman: What impact has that had on the association?
George Condon: Well, the first thing I noticed was everybody ducked under the table, but you looked up, I looked up, and realized pretty quickly that there wasn’t a gunman in the room. Now, I mean, if there had been a gunman in the room, everybody would’ve stayed down. But looking around, you could tell who the reporters were because they were the ones who were not ducking down. They were up reporting on it. And those who weren’t reporters were still ducked under the table. But as far as the change in the association, I mean, we’ve always been security conscious. And certainly, we’re more security conscious now. But if you analyze what happened, there isn’t anything that the association or the hotel could’ve done differently. The fact is the security worked that night.
The gunman did not get inside the ballroom. I mean, there’s some small things that you could change. There should’ve been a table blocking him so he couldn’t run head on. And when we redid the dinner, that was fixed. Nobody could’ve run straight on and gotten anywhere near the ballroom. The other thing is that you can’t lock the door because of fire regulations, but the shooter came down the stairs and exited the door there. If you had had a security person at that door, he wouldn’t have gotten as close as he did. So, there’s some tweaks. And you can always tweak security, but the reality is it worked that night.
Teri Finneman: There are some who criticize the dinner and it’s hobnobbing of journalists and the government officials they cover, particularly with the recent administration’s attacks on the press. Do you think there’s still value 100 years later for the dinner to remain or is it time for a change?
George Condon: Yeah. I’ve always maintained this and I still maintain it. There is a place for one night a year, for the people who cover them and the public officials to be together in a room and maybe share a couple of laughs. And you can use your speeches to get points across. I certainly used my speech in 1994 to get the points across on issues that we were dealing with. And the president actually then talked to me on some of those issues. You don’t normally have a chance to talk to the President of the United States about coverage issues. I was able to do it that night. And secondly, if you’re New York Times, you don’t have any problem getting access to newsmakers, but people at the other news organizations, maybe we don’t get them on the phone quite as easily. I’m able at these dinners to walk up to a cabinet officer. And I’m not going to do a deep interview on the floor. That’s not fair to them. That’s not the setting. But to make the point and set up a later interview or maybe get a quick take on something.
So, it is helpful, maybe not to The New York Times. Their high-minded boycott of the dinner. They don’t seem to have any problem with having the same public officials over to their bureau chief’s house for dinner where people aren’t watching, but they seem to have an objection to doing it when everybody can see you doing it. So, there’s a hypocrisy to folks like The New York Times being so high-minded against the dinner when they’re doing it behind the scenes all the time.
Teri Finneman: What prompted you to want to learn more about the history of the association?
George Condon: Well, I have to confess, when I was president and we have in the program, the dinner program, a list of our own presidents. And there were four vacancies where they didn’t know the name of the president. And that was embarrassing to me that reporters didn’t know who our own presidents were, so I researched that and then found out that three of the ones we listed were wrong.
Teri Finneman: Oh, my.
George Condon: And my comedian was Al Franken. And Al Franken asked me a simple question, who have the other entertainers been over the years? And we couldn’t even say who was the entertainer 10 years before, so I ended up… 10 years of research, I’ve been able to answer… It took 10 years for me to answer all those questions, and I’m still trying to dig up some things because I’ve discovered stories that are just dead wrong. One real quick one. We’ve always said that Richard Pryor was the entertainer at the 1968 dinner, I think it was. Well, that’s been repeated in a lot of newspapers. And yes, somebody named Richard Pryor was the entertainer, but not the Richard Pryor. Instead, it was Richard Cactus Pryor who worked for LBJ’s radio station in Austin. And so, I’ve spent all this time researching to try to fix the mistakes and actually know our own history, because I think there’s value in that.
Teri Finneman: All right, then let’s take it to more broadly. The final question of our show that we always ask guests is why does journalism history matter.
George Condon: Well, because journalism matters. And if you’re doing it today, you have to know where we’ve been. You have to know what the past fights were. How did we get to where we are so that I have the ability to ask a question of the President of the United States? If you don’t know that, then you’re just going blind and you don’t appreciate what an honor it is to do what we’re doing.
Teri Finneman: Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
George Condon: Certainly. It was fun.
Teri Finneman: Thanks for tuning in and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. Until next time, I’m your host, Teri Finneman, signing off with the words of Edward R. Murrow. Good night and good luck.