Annual dinner offers catharsis
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of his comic opus on the press, politics and President Donald Trump, “Daily Show” comedian Hasan Minhaj looked out at the hundreds of journalists gathered in a subterranean hotel ballroom here Saturday night and declared, “This has been one of the strangest events I have ever done in my life.”
The lengthy laughter and applause that followed made clear that he was not the only one who thought that way.
No one knew quite what to expect at this year’s edition of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the chummy Washington ritual that became a flash point over press freedom in a year when the relationship between the White House and its correspondents is anything but friendly. The president skipped the event. Celebrities stayed away. Comedians turned down the gig.
But even as Trump heckled the proceedings in real time — joking at a Pennsylvania rally about reporters “consoling each other in a Washington ballroom” — attendees said the often-frivolous dinner felt oddly profound. Part pep rally, part therapy session, the event became a moment of catharsis for a press corps that has faced months of unrelenting strain.
Loud cheers and a palpable sense of defiance broke out when the president of the Correspondents’ Association, Jeff Mason of Reuters, declared with sermon-like ferocity, “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people.” It was the longest ovation of the night.
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, seated on the dais, reminded the room of journalism’s power, and Woodward articulated the subtext of the evening when he addressed Trump directly, saying, “Mr. President, the media is not fake news.”
Even Minhaj — who opened with a blistering takedown of Trump, noting that the president was “in Pennsylvania because he can’t take a joke” — finished with an earnest ode to free speech. “Only in America can a first-generation immigrant Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the president,” he said.
The event “was a line-in-the-sand night, to an extent I didn’t expect,” E.J. Dionne, a longtime Washington chronicler, said afterward. He added that “having Woodward and Bernstein sends another message” — that journalists can, under the right circumstances, topple a presidency.
Blake Hounshell, editor of Politico Magazine, wrote on Twitter, “The WHCD may have lost some glitz tonight, but recovered its self-respect.”