No Matter Who's in White House, Relationship With Press Will Get Tougher

No matter who wins the White House, attempts to control the press will increase, said a panel of the nation’s top political broadcast journalists at PromaxBDA Station Summit. “Every administration has been more anti-press than the previous one and it hasn’t mattered which party,” said Chuck Todd, NBC News political director and moderator of Meet the Press. “The Sunday shows used to be able to book anyone from the Pentagon without permission from the White House. After 9/11, if you want to book someone in the Defense Department, you have to go through the White House press office. Today, if you want to interview someone from the CDC on Zika, you have to go through the White House. This is why it’s important for us to collectively push back – no matter who wins, it will be worse not better.”

“Getting information out of the White House is getting harder and harder for organizations anyway,” said John Dickerson, anchor of CBS News’ Face the Nation and political director of CBS News. “If they shut you off from access to the White House, you aren’t losing what you would have lost if it were 1961.”