Press Corps Quotes

Reporters are always supposed to be demanding more access and more transparency. So the day that there isn't some friction between the White House press corps and the White House is the day that somebody in the press corps is not doing their job.

I was given a White House - well, you will have to ask the White House that. But I asked to attend the White House briefing because I was, you know, because I wanted to report on the activities there.

The Washington press corps is all too often the Praetorian Guard of the left.

The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!'

I think it's incredibly important that we think about diversity in the context of the White House press corps, because it's important that the group of people there is representative of the diversity that we see throughout the country.

Washington newspaper men know everything.

If the American press corps were as concerned about the Tenth Amendment as it has been protecting the First and trying to get rid of the Second, this would be a far different country.

We don't push back hard enough against the government. We could use, the country in general could use a more adversarial press corps, especially when it comes to matters of national security.

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.

Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press.

My job is to be a spokesman - the spokesman, I suppose - for the President, for the White House, to do the daily briefings, to manage the press corps in terms of travel, day-to-day needs, access, interviews, all those issues.

I enjoy seeing the press. I learn much from reporters. In the White House press corps alone there are at least half a dozen experts already on animal husbandry.

AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

The Court’s jurisprudence is focused more than anything else on who under the Constitution gets to decide policy, not what that policy should be. This is the main reason Democrats and the press corps are furious about the Court’s decisions. For decades they have counted on a majority of Justices to deliver or bless the policy results they want: on abortion, voting rights, healthcare, racial preferences, climate and economic regulation. You name it, the Court found ways to deliver it with balancing tests, trimester analysis, and the discovery of unenumerated rights between the lines of the Constitution’s text. For decades conservative critics have argued that the role of the Court should be different—supporting rights that are actually in the Constitution, but otherwise enforcing the separation of powers so each branch of government stays in its lane as defined by the Founders. With the arrival of three new Justices nominated by Donald Trump and shepherded to confirmation by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, that Court has arrived.

The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors.

As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.

I recognize the need to provide the press - and, through you, the American people - with information to the fullest extent possible. In our democracy, the work of the Pentagon press corps is important, defending our freedom and way of life is what this conflict is about, and that certainly includes freedom of the press.

People still assume the White House Correspondents' Association works for the White House, when in reality, it's a group of journalists who cover the White House. It's a branding thing, but because it has the 'White House' before it, people think they're just King Joffrey's goons.

I would say that President Roosevelt probably was more intimately in touch with the press corps at the White House than President Truman was.

President Bush deliberately did not apologize for things and that’s because advisers around him, including those there, felt that the press corps would jump on that and down his throat in a way that he couldn’t recover from. So, especially on the war he was very careful on that line.

No one becomes a reporter to make friends, but neither is it pleasant in a situation like the war in Vietnam to find yourself completely at odds with the views of the highest officials of your country. The pessimism of the Saigon press corps was of the most reluctant kind: many of us came to love Vietnam, we saw our friends dying all around us, and we would have liked nothing better than to believe the war was going well and that it would eventually be won. But it was impossible for us to believe those things without denying the evidence of our own senses.... And so we had no alternative but to report the truth....

The White House press corps isn't there at a press briefing. It's not... They're not news gatherers there. There really isn't any media.

I am a member of that small, little group that covers - I'm a member of the White House correspondents association. I go to the White House every day.

One of the principles of White House coverage is that a wide variety of news outlets should be represented at briefings and press conferences.

John Kerry is going to have a rough tenure as secretary of state. But let's face it: whoever came after Hillary Clinton was going to have to deal with a foreign affairs press corps that has been sleeping for four years. From the moment Hillary entered Foggy Bottom, political reporters have treated their beloved secretary of state with kid gloves.