Tag: press secretary
White House’s Spicer Falsely Accuses Media On Crowd Estimates

White House’s Spicer Falsely Accuses Media On Crowd Estimates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Saturday accused the media of framing photographs to understate the crowd that attended Donald Trump’s inauguration, a new jab in a long-running fight between the new president and the news organizations who cover him.

In an unusual and fiery statement on Saturday night, White House spokesman Sean Spicer lashed out about tweeted photographs that showed large, empty spaces on the National Mall during the ceremony on Friday.

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said in a brief statement. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm about the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

Washington’s city government estimated 1.8 million people attended President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, making it the largest gathering ever on the Mall.

Aerial photographs showed that the crowds for Trump’s inauguration were smaller than in 2009.

Spicer’s rebuke followed a larger-than-expected turnout for women’s marches protesting Trump across the United States on Saturday, including at the flagship event in Washington, where a crowd of hundreds of thousands clogged the streets and appeared to be larger than those who came for Trump’s inauguration.

Spicer, who did not take questions from reporters, said spaces for 720,000 people were full when Trump took his oath.

He also said the National Park Service does not put out official crowd counts. “No one had numbers.”

Washington’s Metro subway system said 193,000 users had entered the system by 11 a.m. on Friday, compared with 513,000 at that time during Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

On Saturday, Metro reported ridership of 275,000 at 11 a.m. as it struggled to handle the crowd converging on downtown Washington for the protest march.

Trump has long used the media as a foil during his unconventional climb to the White House. On Saturday, he blamed the media for making up his feud with the CIA over its investigation into Russian hacking.

Spicer also criticized a reporter who made an error in a pool report during a brief ceremony in the Oval Office on Friday. Earlier, Trump called out the reporter by name at the CIA headquarters.

“There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable, and I’m here to tell you it goes two ways. We’re going to hold the press accountable as well,” Spicer said.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Andy Sullivan; Edited by Kieran Murray and Mary Milliken)

IMAGE: Press Secretary Sean Spicer delivers a statement at the press briefing room at the White House in Washington, January 21, 2017.  REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The White House Press Briefing Room Might Become A Hostile Place For Hispanic Journalists

The White House Press Briefing Room Might Become A Hostile Place For Hispanic Journalists

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. 

President-elect Donald Trump is considering Laura Ingraham, a Fox News contributor and conservative radio talk show host, as a possible choice for White House press secretary. If he picks her, it would be Ingraham’s job to brief the White House press corps on behalf of the Trump administration, and the attacks she’s launched against Hispanic journalists and Spanish-language media would make the White House briefing room a very hostile place for Hispanic journalists.

On November 13, The Hillreported that Ingraham was “under serious consideration” to be the press secretary of Trump’s White House, an indication that the contempt Trump showed for the press during his campaign will percolate into his administration, since Ingraham has her own history of railing against journalists whose reporting she doesn’t agree with.

During her crusade against “biased,” “post-American” journalism, Ingraham has singled out Hispanic media specifically, taking offense that Telemundo and Univision are “Hispanic-centric” networks which “revile the American experience” and have a “toxic” impact. The networks are extremely valuable for many Spanish-speakers who rely on them to better “navigate America,” but Ingraham has accused them of “teaching illegals how to avoid deportation” and of preventing people from learning English.

Ingraham has also taken issue with Hispanic journalists merely for speaking Spanish, once criticizing Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart for translating for a Spanish-speaking guest and mocking his accent by saying it was “so herky-jerky.” Ingraham has been critical of multilingualism in the United States, extending her mockery on Twitter to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) for his command of Spanish and criticizing retail workers who speak English with an accent, saying, “You can’t understand them. Sometimes you think you’re in a foreign country.” Any member of the press corp who sounds similar could be subjected to the same level of mockery and disdain from a press secretary Ingraham.

Covering the Trump campaign was especially challenging for Hispanic media, since the president-elect showed particular animosity toward the main Spanish-language networks and consistently ignored requests from Spanish-language print outlets seeking access — an approach in line with his “English-only” strategy of seeking electoral victory by courting primarily white voters. Picking Ingraham as press secretary would demonstrate that Trump has little interest in diverging from this campaign strategy while governing.

White House Spokesman Jay Carney Steps Down

White House Spokesman Jay Carney Steps Down

By Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Jay Carney will leave the administration this summer, to be replaced by longtime press aide Josh Earnest, President Barack Obama announced Friday.

Obama, speaking to the White House press corps, called Carney “one of my closest friends.”

Carney, a former Moscow bureau chief for Time magazine, did not say what he plans to do next. He said only that he will not be moving to Russia to serve as U.S. ambassador, an appointment that has been speculated upon in the past.

Obama called Earnest a man whose “name describes his demeanor.” He will take over in the coming weeks.

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr