Which is to say, the White House needs summit photo-ops. It just doesn’t want the unpleasant questions that come hand in hand with them.

As The Post’s Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey report from Hanoi, the White House “abruptly banned four U.S. journalists from covering President Trump’s dinner here Wednesday with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un after some of them shouted questions at the leaders during their earlier meetings.” Those “shouted questions” are a staple of covering the president of the United States. They come during “pool sprays” at which the president sits with Cabinet members, special guests or foreign leaders. Photojournalists capture video and stills, and reporters blurt out questions once the official back-and-forth has concluded.

AD

AD

Jeff Mason of Reuters and Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press took advantage of such moments during two events at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel. From The Post:

During Trump’s first visit with Kim on Wednesday night, American reporters asked Trump four questions during two brief photo opportunities; they asked Kim none. Eight North Korean reporters were also present for the summit — the entirely male contingent wore pins celebrating Kim Jong Un and were dressed alike — but they asked no questions. When Trump and Kim first shook hands, Mason asked whether Trump had walked back his vow to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. “No,” the president replied. And Lemire asked whether he would declare an end to the Korean War, to which Trump replied, “We’ll see.” A few minutes later, when Trump and Kim sat down for their one-on-one meeting, Lemire asked Trump whether he had a response to Cohen’s testimony. Trump shook his head and did not answer.

Pool reports from the Wall Street Journal’s Vivian Salama detail what happened next. Exclusion, that is. “Please note: your print pooler is the only print reporter who will be allowed into the final spray tonight with Chairman Kim,” wrote Salama in a pool report. But then the White House correspondents banded together, as Salama explained in the report: “Originally [White House press secretary] Sarah Sanders informed us that no print reporters would be allowed in due to sensitivities over shouted questions in the previous sprays. But when our photo colleagues joined us in protest, they decided to allow one print reporter in.”

Bolding added to highlight an echo from December 2017, when Sanders reportedly told CNN’s Jim Acosta that she “couldn’t promise” future access if he asked the president a question at a pool spray at the White House. “The White House is concerned about too many questions being shouted at a photo op,” says Ann Compton, 72, who covered Washington and the White House for more than 40 years. “Questions being shouted at a photo op isn’t the White House’s problem. They should be worried about showing the president at work. The whole point of a photo op is to show the president of the United States doing America’s business.”

AD

AD

Time and again, concerned citizens have appealed to journalists to band together when they experience the bluster and the pushback and the stiff-arm of the Trump White House. That’s precisely what happened here. Just like any White House, the Trump people rely on the photographers and the TV cameras to shape the image of a U.S. president at work on an international breakthrough, perhaps. That’s a form of leverage, especially when it comes to the ultra-narcissistic Trump. The pool relied on that leverage to secure entry for Salama. “My understanding is that the photographers said they wouldn’t go in unless there was a print contingent,” says Olivier Knox, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. (Knox did not make the trip to Hanoi.)

As The Post points out, Trump’s predecessor didn’t always secure first-rate access for the media overseas:

When President Barack Obama met with Chinese Vice Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of a regional summit in Bali in 2011, the White House barred wire service and a newspaper reporter from the photo op, allowing in only news photographers. That drew protests on the spot from the press pool, including a Washington Post reporter. In 2009, when Obama made his first visit to Beijing, he held a news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao at which reporters from both countries were not allowed to ask questions.

That said, Obama appointees “haggled for weeks” with Chinese officials to allow a U.S. reporter to ask Chinese President Xi Jinping a question at a 2014 event. And in 2010, then-White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made a strong push with Indian officials for U.S. press access at an event with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

AD

AD

There’s no such thing as business as usual when it comes to access rules on a foreign reporting trip. “Each one of these is a negotiation between the U.S. and the other country,” said Knox. In this case, the “other country” is North Korea, a place where the press is free to report exactly what the regime wants to be reported. The country is last on the Reporters Without Borders press-freedom rankings. “The widespread adoption of mobile phones, including smartphones, has been accompanied by technical measures that provide the regime with almost complete control over communications and files transmitted over the national intranet,” notes the group.

The grand irony here is that President Trump has done an extravagant number of these pool sprays, far in excess of the output of many predecessors. He appears to love the attention, except when he doesn’t. Good luck predicting when the stiff-arm gets extended.