Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review, believes that the blacktie White House Correspondent's Dinner, which encourages its members to snare the best celebrity guests, "underscores the notion that journalists are part of a wealthy elite, completely out of touch with ordinary Americans."
Reider of course does not believe that this is true, and only believes that this event should be scrapped because it makes the Washington press corps seem elitist.
This dinner has been an embarrassment for years. It's well past time to shut it down. It's a vivid symbol, like we need another one, of what's so very wrong with elite Washington journalism.Years ago, the dinner was a low-key event where Washington journalists entertained their sources. The game changed in 1987 when the late Michael Kelly, then with the Baltimore Sun, snagged Iran/contra It Girl Fawn Hall as one of the Sun's guests.
The battle for the get was on.
And what an innocent time that now seems, with today's headlong rush by distinguished news organizations that should know better competing furiously to line up celebrity dates.
Reider says journalism isn't elitist because there are "far too many journalists at smaller papers work for hideously low salaries."
Before Michael Kelly died, Reider asked him about starting the craze to find the biggest celebrities to attend the dinner.
That same year I asked Kelly – an extremely distinguished journalist – what he thought of the event he had unwittingly transformed with his Fawn Hall maneuver.The problem, he replied, wasn't so much the dinner as the culture it mirrored. It was, he said, an "accurate reflection of Washington journalism," which he described as "smug and arrogant and self-important."
The WMD fiasco should have been a jolt to that smugness. And scrapping the White House Correspondents' Association dinner would be a small but symbolically significant step forward for Washington journalism.
Even in admitting some wrong, Reider brings up the "WMD fiasco," as if that is what indicates Washington's liberal elite. The lesson: more attacks on the Bush administration will get rid of that nasty image of being liberal elitists.
