As this year’s president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, NBC News Senior White House Correspondents Kelly O’Donnell will headline one of D.C.’s biggest nights – a mix of politicians, media types and celebrities, broadcast live on C-SPAN and other networks.
But the issues a WHCA president routinely addresses range from serious issues such as demanding media access to the president and promoting the role of journalists in a free society; to the less earth-shattering but still important things, like dealing with plumbing problems in the cramped confines of the West Wing’s press area.
O’Donnell celebrated his 30th year at NBC News on Thursday, a tenure that spanned four presidential elections, seven election cycles and numerous major events, including embedding himself with troops in Iraq.
This week, she took a break to chat with Deadline about the dinner, the challenging times for many in the media and the “direct connection” between loud questions to the president and limited access.
DEADLINE: Do you have any preview at all of what you’re going to say in your speech?
KELLY O’DONNELL: I hope that overall we can use this evening to remind people why a free press is so vital, especially in an election year. I would like the evening to also reflect on the members. I want them to see themselves in the evening. When we get together for the White House Correspondents’ Dinners, there’s always a lot of fun, a lot of energy, and all those good things. I also wanted to feel like it was about the history of the press corps and why our work matters.
I also think that in the competitive, difficult times that we’re in, where the world is on edge and there’s conflict that we’re all talking about, all of these real things are present. We know it. We know it’s the backdrop when we come together. But it’s still important to recognize great work, to talk about how we’re helping the next generation of journalists through our grants, and how we’re helping people in the press have a moment to celebrate the fact that this work matters is, and it is also necessary for democracy.
DEADLINE: Last year, the dinner took place amid numerous layoffs in the news industry. That is also the case this year. How will you approach this?
O’DONNELL: I believe that threats to our profession come in all sorts of forms, and we are certainly thinking about layoffs and work anxiety. We know there have been cuts in our own community in White House coverage this year, and we will address them. We are aware of this and would like to encourage the public who believe in professionally collected news to support news wherever you can. Do it at the local level. Do it with a subscription to your local newspaper. Do this by paying a news organization for an app—one of those steps that can show the public that news is a product worth investing in because it matters to our society.
DEADLINE: How did you come to choose Colin Jost as the main dinner entertainer?
O’DONNELL: One of the big jobs of the WHCA president is to choose the main entertainer, and I’ve thought about it for a very long time. As a longtime NBC employee, it was my first time checking out our gallery of talented stars, and Colin was the first to catch my eye because he had the perfect skillset for the evening. He is a writer first and foremost, and all of our members can relate to that. As a student journalist, he worked as a reporter from a very early age. He gets it, and writing is the foundation of his entire entertainment career. In addition, he is the longest-serving Weekend update Anchor from the great tradition of Saturday Night Live, and he was my target. And the fact that he said yes and was willing to come and do it was an absolute success for us. So what convinces me most about all the planning is that it’s going to be great.
DEADLINE: That it’s a tough gig for an entertainer because you follow the president.
O’DONNELL: That was part of what I conveyed to him, which was that in his long entertainment career, there’s only one place where you follow the president, and that’s a high bar, but it’s a career-propelling moment. And that’s part of what I wanted him to experience, that in a career that’s already filled with awards, there’s only one place to follow the president, and that’s at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner . And so he realized there was a challenge and all that. Comedians who come to dinner always come. It’s not an easy space. We emphasized that we wanted to see a comedy that covered the entire political spectrum and was aimed directly at us, the national media. Because he writes about current events week after week and writes about the personalities in the news in a funny way – I just think he’s perfectly prepared for a big night.
DEADLINE: A big part of your job is ensuring press access to the White House. What was the biggest challenge?
O’DONNELL: To the outside world, the focus is often on the dinner because that’s the public thing that’s fun and exciting and that people see. The WHCA President’s work focuses on issues such as media access every day, seven days a week, year-round. Can we get our press corps to watch the president sign an important bill? Can we bring our reporters – not just the pool – but a broader group into the room to be able to question the president? When a foreign leader visits, we begin to seek access to him in advance so that we have the opportunity to interview a foreign leader as well. This is very important when talking about the kind of problems that have occurred in Ukraine and Israel, where foreign leaders, partners of the president, are involved in these decisions. And that the American press can rarely question them.
The difficulty is that each White House wants to control its own message and events, and that’s a tug of war – a professional one, but it’s one that we go back and forth every day. We want as much access as possible so the public can see what’s really happening, and the White House has its own priorities, which don’t always include how the press wants to cover an event. For us, it’s not press for press’s sake. It’s a press for the public, for the American people, to have transparency.
DEADLINE: I often hear the White House and the [Biden] The campaign says it wants to “meet voters where they are.” Often these seem to be non-traditional media. Are you and other reporters upset that Joe Biden might do an interview with him? Smart Podcast, but not with the national press corps?
O’DONNELL: We certainly understand what appeals to the White House, the campaign or senior officials about these new channels, and they are free to do any of that. However, we worry that the president’s time is fleeting and limited, and if he wants to speak publicly, we believe that we bring expertise on the issues, a day-to-day knowledge of what is happening, and that we have an audience. And we also have the historic standards of journalism in our press corps… at each of our news organizations. When you watch an entertainer’s podcast, there’s no one fact-checking… It’s a different animal. Our work meets all the requirements of good journalism. That’s why we fight for this access. We have no problem addressing different target groups. That has value for them. However, that does not diminish our desire to bring professional journalists who are experts in the loop before the President as often as possible.
DEADLINE: Do you have any indication as to whether another formal press conference may be imminent?
O’DONNELL: We regularly work towards this. We believe there should be more press conferences. We believe this also serves the President’s interest, as our reporting gives him the opportunity to speak to the public. He can say it any way he wants. He can answer however he wants. We would prefer more formal occasions than shouting questions at the end of an unrelated event. We’re doing this because we want more access to the president. There is a direct connection between shouted questions and restricted access. The more access you have, the less need you have to ask questions. Not that it will disappear completely, but places where you can question calmly and clearly have real value, and we’d like to see more of that.
DEADLINE: Could you explain to people what the Laveteria is?
O’DONNELL: Yes. The founders were unable to think about the kind of space the media would need to live and work in our area of the White House. Therefore, there is an area in the west wing that is a combination of break room and bathrooms. So people eat their lunch right where others stop by. It’s a very, very narrow space. So it is a combination of toilet and cafeteria.