VIDEO: White House Correspondents Gone Wild

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It’s often easy to dump on White House reporters. They frequently get attacked for hyping trivial stories or for being both prisoners and promoters of the conventional wisdom. They’re routinely assailed for not asking the right questions (as in the questions their critics would like to pose the president and his aides). But it’s a tough beat—try squeezing unpackaged news out of the White House—and most of them do work long and hard to penetrate (or explain) the surface story.

An especially difficult task for them occurs during one of my favorite moments of White House journalism: the pre-presidential stand-up. This happens when the president holds a press conference or issues a statement in person. In the moments before the commander in chief takes to the podium, the network correspondents do live intros, talking to their anchors in the studios, and telling the audience what to look for in the coming remarks. These journos are usually standing next to one another—and each speaking loudly. Their reports meld into an aural amalgamation of media analysis. For each of them, the challenge is to keep focus, stare straight into the camera, say something intelligent, and, above all else, not listen to the cacophony he or she is helping to create—and not to be distracted by the other reporters in the room chuckling about this cluster-report.

Here’s an example from yesterday’s surprise visit by Obama to the White House briefing room to discuss his long-form birth certificates. The four stars of this video are Chuck Todd of NBC News and MSNBC, Wendell Goler of Fox News, Bill Plante of CBS News, and Jake Tapper of ABC News.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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