News organizations defend off-the-record event with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Reporters hung out with Donald Trump over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, though American news consumers won’t be reading too much about the event. That’s because it was all off-the-record, meaning that Trump could say anything he wanted, and the journalists who heard it all couldn’t pass along a single word.

Mike Allen, the former Politico mainstay turned correspondent for start-up Axios, tweeted some pictures from the event. Those were allowed by the authorities.

There is plenty of precedent for reporters doing off-the-record discussions with presidents, and the tradition remained strong in the Obama years. The rationale for attending is that journalists can get a window into the president’s thinking on stuff. And the rebuttal to that rationale is that the president uses the opportunity to spin reporters on his position, without any fingerprints on the transaction. It’s a way of getting the media to internalize the official view of things.

New York Times Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller said, “Our policy on off-the-record with presidents and presidents-elect is to push long and hard to do things on record.” However: “With journalists, you need some insight into the president-elect’s thinking. We have found in the past that this has helped us with Obama,” says Bumiller, arguing that the exposure has given the newspaper the “thought and direction to pursue stories afterward.”