Our view: Access to Trump is not the same as transparency
Most Americans might not realize this, but the democratic process of having your federal government answer tough questions — live, on television — is an act of accountability fast becoming extinct.
Once upon a time, a chief spokesman for the White House or Pentagon or State Department would go before cameras every day, certainly every week, and take any and all questions about government policies impacting millions of American lives. No more.
Come Friday, it will be 67 days since White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a “daily press briefing.” That’s a record dry spell. And it has been nearly a year since the last, on-camera news conference by a Pentagon spokesperson. The State Department sometimes goes weeks without a “daily” briefing.
Meanwhile, news cycles keep generating vital questions: Is a New York Times report accurate that plans are being prepared to send up to 120,000 troops — a force like the one used to invade Iraq — to counter Iranian threats? Does President Donald Trump expect Americans to endure months of tumbling stocks and rising prices as his China trade war drags on? Why does he keep saying China pays billions in tariffs when American companies and consumers actually foot the bill?
To his credit, media-savvy Trump makes himself available for shouted questions as he boards the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn or during heads-of-state meetings more than many prior presidents. And the Pentagon offers up experts on specific topics or does occasional briefings with cameras turned off.
“But access is not the same thing as transparency,” says Martha Joynt Kumar, an emerita professor at Towson University who studies the history of presidential press relations as director of the White House Transition Project.
Necessary follow-up questions during Trump’s blustering Q&A’s are all but impossible. And the absence of regularly scheduled briefings denies reporters the chance to dig deeper into administration policy, forcing the White House to explain its plans and be openly accountable for governing decisions.
The lack of transparency is of a piece with other acts of concealment such as curtailing the release of White House visitor logs, breaking with the norm of releasing tax returns, refusing to make administration officials available for congressional oversight hearings, and denying a government watchdog the necessary metrics for judging the success or failure of the Afghanistan War.
While Trump continues to denigrate the media, journalists serve a purpose so vital the Founding Fathers forever enshrined press freedom in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
It’s not possible for every American to walk into the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department to ask questions that matter to them. This is why they rely on journalists to do the asking. The least the American people can expect from the Trump administration is to do the answering.