Trump Will Attend The White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We Sure Won’t. | EUROtoday

For 17 years, HuffPost has attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the televised annual gathering of political journalists in Washington, D.C. This yr, we can’t abdomen it. We’re skipping.

The dinner has all the time had its critics. When the sitting U.S. president attended — the norm till Trump took workplace in 2017 — journalists have been celebrating at a black-tie gala with the very individuals they have been supposed to carry accountable.

This uneasy association infamously veered into appalling spectacle in 2004, when President George W. Bush joked about his failure to search out weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as some in attendance laughed. The mainstream media had disastrously did not scrutinize the case for a pointless warfare that, by one estimate, resulted within the deaths of greater than 650,000 individuals. And there they have been, laughing about it in tuxedos.

Still, HuffPost attended the occasion for a easy cause: At its core, the dinner goals to honor journalism and the worth of a free press.

But this yr, we should draw a line. President Donald Trump will attend the dinner and handle the room.

At HuffPost, we’ve no downside being in the identical room with Trump and asking him direct questions. Our White House correspondent, S.V. Dáte, does this on a regular basis — and is scorned and insulted by the White House for his troubles.

The downside is welcoming Trump at an occasion devoted to press freedom. Trump’s total presidency is, after all, an affront to a free press.

He has unleashed the FCC on his critics, punished publications for exercising their First Amendment rights, threatened to jail journalists and used the regulation as a software of intimidation.

The concept of elevating a glass to the facility of journalism with him is without delay ridiculous and embarrassing. Count us out.

If you consider journalism ought to maintain energy to account — not rejoice it — help that work by becoming a member of HuffPost’s membership program. Your contribution helps fund impartial reporting that asks the onerous questions, regardless of who’s within the room.