The elitist coverage of the Correspondents’ Dinner and the coronavirus – Columbia Journalism Review

May 3, 2022

On Saturday nightfollowing three blissful years without one and weeks of over-the-top media hype about its returnthe White House Correspondents Dinner made its post-covid comeback. President Biden spokea departure, we were told far too many times, from his predecessors no-showsas did The Daily Shows Trevor Noah, the first comedian to host the event since Michelle Wolfs (barely) edgy 2018 speech offended the prim sensibilities of many White House reporters. Both men made jokes about the pandemic, amid other targets. This is the first time a president attended this dinner in six years, Biden said. We had a horrible plague followed by two years of covid. Noah said he was honored to be hosting the nations most distinguished superspreader event, before asking did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron Dinner? The second someone offers you a free dinner you all turn into Joe Rogan.

The covid context was always likely to loom large, but the aforementioned Gridiron event, which itself returned from a three-year hiatus in early April (and is even yuckier than the Correspondents Dinner), supercharged matters; more than eighty guests subsequently tested positive, including numerous reporters. Last week, Anthony FauciBidens top covidadviser, who attended the Gridirondecided to skip the Correspondents Dinner, citing a personal risk calculation. (Fauci thought it was too dangerous to come tonight, Noah said onstage. Pete Davidson thinks its okay, and we all went with Pete.) All this raised questions as to whether the Correspondents Dinner should be canceled or whether Biden ought to go, and under what circumstances; some health experts said that his attendance would be overly risky given his responsibility to the nation to stay healthy, though others were more positive about his presence and the event in general, arguing that Biden should show Americans how to live alongside the virus. Ultimately, the organizers strengthened their rules to demand a same-day negative test as well as proof of vaccination (they turned down a chance to install germicidal UV lights), while Biden wore a mask when he wasnt talking and took a pass on the eating portion of the event.

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Like Noah, Biden addressed the debate around holding the Correspondents Dinner at the dinner itself. I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight because of covid, he said. Well, were here to show the country that were getting through this pandemic. Apparently, members of his administration have recently sounded far less sanguine behind the scenes following a spike in reported covid cases, both nationally and in Washington, where several high-profile politicians have been affected. The cabinet secretaries Merrick Garland, Gina Raimondo, and Tom Vilsack all tested positive post-Gridiron (as, a week later, did Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City); last week, Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, and, most notably, Vice President Kamala Harris both reported cases. All said that they had mild or no symptoms. Headlines and push alerts about their diagnoses rained down regardless.

After the Gridiron, in particular, this type of coverage irked the White House: according to Alexander Nazaryan, of Yahoo News, officials saw reporters focus on a handful of largely asymptomatic cases among members of the political elite as coming at the expense of a much more important story about the administrations requests for more covid funds stalling out in Congress, with the White House calculating that Jen Psaki, the press secretary, faced fewer than half as many questions about funding (ten) in the entire first week of April as about safety protocols around Biden (twenty-one) at a single briefing on April 7. At the same briefing, Psaki frustratedly waved around the administrations pandemic preparedness plan and offered reporters a copy. Around the same time, she did likewise with a thick binder detailing how past covid funds were spent, amid Republican complaints about a lack of transparency. Stats Rachel Cohrs said that she was the only reporter to take Psaki up on her offer. When she did so, officials refused her a copy, instead allowing her an hour with the binder under supervision.

This, obviously, was intensely hypocritical. More generally, covid infections among senior officials are newsworthyisolation affects their duties and covid remains a dangerous disease, especially for unvaccinated, immunocompromised, and older people; take these factors together, and Bidens exposure clearly matters. Debates like the one around whether, and how, to hold the Correspondents Dinner, meanwhile, can feed into more broadly relevant societal conversations about risk calculations at this stage of the pandemic.

Often, though, the tenor of such coverageand, particularly where the Correspondents Dinner has been concerned, its volumehas been disproportionate, sometimes absurdly so. A powerful person getting infected isnt necessarily that big a story if their symptoms arent debilitating and, as has been the case with the names in the spotlight recently, they are vaccinated, sometimes quadruply so; were nowhere near the level, so far, of the time Trump went to the hospital in 2020. More importantly, and more to the White Houses post-Gridiron gripe, focusing on elites can lessen focus elsewherein this case, on funding interventions, from testing to vaccines, that are urgently needed by medically vulnerable people in particular, both in the US and globally. Throughout the pandemic, media coverage has often, if by no means always, framed avoiding infection as a matter of personal responsibility. This approach has always been deeply flawed, and it remains so. As federal covid funds dry up, programs that have supported hospitals and the uninsured are withering. The idea that the Correspondents Dinner is in any way more important than that is shameful.

We have seen plenty of coverage of the funding stakes. Much of it, though, has focused on Washington politicking at the expense of the bigger picture. At this (hopefully) late stage of the pandemic, the press shouldnt be limiting our lens to the scope of congressional will, but rather working to convene a much broader debate not only around covid, but healthcare policy more generally, not least the urgent need to end medical racism and the many other glaring inequities and flaws in the system. Again, some journalists are working to do this; yesterday morning, to cite just one example, a story about funding for the uninsured was higher up the New York Times homepage than the Correspondents Dinner. But its hard to conclude that this has added up to an urgent, agenda-shaping national conversation. Other big stories, not least the war in Ukraine, have recently sapped much of our bandwidth on that front, and thats understandable. But it also underscores just how few distractions we can collectively afford to indulgeand distraction is a perfect word for the Correspondents Dinner.

Not all of the coverage of the dinner was elitist; Axioss Paige Hopkins, among others, drew attention to the disparity in covid requirements between guests and the staff members serving them, flipping the script to shine a light on one close-to-home example of covid inequality. Much of the dinner discourse, though, was circus-like and incestuous. Of course, as I and many others have written before, the dinner didnt need covid to come along to be accused of that; as the Democratic strategist turned pundit David Axelrod told the Times ahead of the event, there is a question of whether its EVER appropriate to engage in an exercise in gaudy, celebrity-drenched self-adulation. Axelrod added that this was a separate questionbut actually it isnt. Its painfully consistent for a media ecosystem that treats a DC schmoozefest as really mattering to treat the many victims of Americas healthcare system as if they dont.

Like Wolf in 2018, Noah had some serious words for the press on Saturday, amid all the jokes. In America you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortableeven if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable, he said, before pivoting to the war in Ukraine. Ask yourself this question: If Russian journalistshad the freedom to write any words, to show any stories, or to ask any questionsif they had basically what you havewould they be using it in the same way that you do? The immediate context here may have been different, but covid, again, was not a separate question.

Below, more on the Correspondents Dinner, covid, and the White House:

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