White House correspondents urge campaigns to be more transparent

The White House Correspondents' Association plans to send its newly released declaration of principles and practices to all of the presidential campaigns, with the expectation that the campaigns will follow the protocols for press access. "We'll send our final draft to the presidential campaigns and urge them to embrace the letter of the rules where applicable and the spirit in all cases. It's never too early to start pushing for openness and transparency in the next administration," WHCA President Christi Parsons said. The document, released on April 22 to the White House press corps, outlines a set of principles and practices the WHCA believes the White House should follow. The document won’t be signed by the White House -- it is an independent declaration. Press corps members have a month to make comments on the documents before they will be sent to the White House.

“As members of the White House press corps, we believe we have a duty to protect vigorously the public's right to know about the work of their elected and appointed officials, particularly the activities of the Office of the President of the United States,” the declaration states. “We believe that the public's right to know depends on the broadest possible access by the press to cover the full range of activities that the President undertakes in performing the public's business.” The principles and practices outlined in the document are heavy on more access to the president than is currently available, hoping to alleviate a common complaint among the White House press corps of the increasingly limited access they have to actually question President Obama. Many of the practices are already in place, though some of them are clear to point out points of tension between the White House press corps and the administration, such as the point that “social media accounts should not be used to circumvent the press corps.”