When it gets tough, Spicer heads to Skype
Amid tense times with D.C. reporters, White House goes beyond the Beltway
They’re a smalltown newspaper editor in Kentucky coal country and a California-based syndicated talk radio host who reaches hundreds of stations; they’re television news anchors in “sanctuary cities” and a political science professor who blogs from Ashland, Ohio.
They all have questions for White House spokesman Sean Spicer — and they’re different from the ones often asked in the high-speed Washington news cycle.
Five months after his introduction of “Skype seats” in the White House briefings, Spicer pronounced the experiment to allow reporters across the country to ask questions through the video phone service an unqualified success. He said he’d like to expand the initiative and have four Skype questions at most briefings.
It’s not just that the White House is reaching beyond Washington reporters for questions, Spicer said. It’s about bringing those local questions into the Washington debate as stories about Russia investigations and Trump’s social media dominate the news cycle from the nation’s capital.
“It’s informative to have a bunch of Beltway reporters realize that the readership that in some cases they’re helping to inform — or viewership or whatever it is — are much more focused on issues that they have shown zero interest in,” Spicer said.
Spicer has taken Skype questions from 32 outside-the-Beltway outlets in 13 briefings. A USA TODAY analysis of news briefing transcripts shows:
The top questions from the Skype seats have been about topics such as immigration, tax policy and infrastructure — issues the White House wants to highlight. The top questions from Washington reporters at those same briefings: Trump’s allegations that Presi-
“It’s informative to have a bunch of Beltway reporters realize that the readership ... are much more focused on issues that they have shown zero interest in.” White House spokesman Sean Spicer
dent Obama wiretapped him at Trump Tower, the president’s use of intelligence and the Russia election controversy. “It’s telling, more than anything else,” Spicer said.
72% of Skype questions have come from states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. Multiple questions have come from battleground states such as Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania — as well as Louisiana, North Dakota and Spicer’s native Rhode Island, a fact he playfully acknowledged. “Not sure how she snuck in there,” he said while introducing a WPRI-TV reporter on the first day of Skype questions Feb. 1.
The questions have come from 15 television stations, 12 radio programs, four local newspapers and a blogger.
Spicer said he’s working to increase the geographical diversity of the questions, but he’s happy with the mix.
“It should bear out that we have picked almost entirely affiliate-type people, and we’ve added some talk radio, which I’m really proud of,” Spicer said.
“We always wanted to allow voices that don’t have the opportunity to come in, and one of those voices is talk radio,” he said. “And it allows them to engage with their audience in an informed way.”
Talk radio is a predominately conservative medium, and it hasn’t always let Spicer off easy.
In March, as Spicer was becoming exasperated by questions about a controversy driven by the president’s own tweets, he turned to a talk radio host in Atlanta.
“Thank you, Sean, for taking questions from a talk radio host right here in Georgia and not in the D.C. swamp,” said Bryan Crabtree, who spoke in front of a backdrop dominated by advertising for his radio show. He asked why Trump hadn’t fired the IRS commissioner and whether House Speaker Paul Ryan was “leading President Trump down a very wrong path on health care.”
Helen Ferre, White House director of media affairs, screens the requests and gets a sense of the questions to prepare Spicer. There are test runs on Skype to make sure there aren’t any lighting or sound issues.
There have been awkward moments and technical glitches. The first day, Skype reporters weren’t sure what to call Spicer, referring to him as “Secretary Spicer,” an honorific traditionally reserved for a Cabinet secretary, or “Commander Spicer,” using his title in the Naval Reserve. White House reporters just call him “Sean.”
Spicer has called on Skype questioners by the wrong names.
Some talk radio hosts have taken the opportunity to excoriate the “elite media bubble.”
John DePetro, a talk radio host from Rhode Island, said he gives Spicer “tremendous credit” for the experiment but couldn’t help but laugh at himself. “They kept my face up on the screen the entire time Sean answered my question. I was thinking that to those in the White House press corps, it might have seemed a little bit of
Wizard of Oz,” he said. Elizabeth Crisp, a reporter for
The Advocate in Baton Rouge, pressed Spicer on the administration’s policies on long-term disaster recovery. She said she didn’t get a satisfactory answer, but the experience was worthwhile.
“It was a chance to bring attention to an issue of importance to Louisiana, which is still recovering from Katrina more than a decade after the storm,” she said.
“I think the Skype seat is a great concept and offers a chance for reporters like myself outside of D.C. to ask the administration about topics that probably would not be addressed otherwise,” she said.
Spicer is responsible for more structural changes to the daily question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House. He closed off many briefings to video cameras — a move condemned by Washingtonbased television reporters.
On a radio show hosted by conservative Laura Ingraham this month, Spicer said he was trying to prevent showboating by correspondents who “want to become YouTube stars and ask some snarky question that’s been asked eight times.”
Spicer’s mission to encourage friendly questions is not unprecedented. White House press secretaries figured out long ago how to deflect tough questions by calling on reporters they knew would probably change the subject — often members of the foreign media, who are less interested in domestic political controversies.
Franklin Roosevelt invited reporters for Oval Office chats, hoping middle-class correspondents would be more sympathetic to his New Deal policies than the wealthy newspaper owners. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were skilled at using television to their advantage, bypassing print reporters. Bill Clinton appeared on late-night television, and Barack Obama gave interviews to YouTube personalities who asked about the proper way for dogs to wear pants.
“We always wanted to allow voices that don’t have the opportunity to come in, and one of those voices is talk radio.” White House spokesman Sean Spicer