Why I Missed the Correspondents' Dinner
The debate over it is a black-and-white argument over something that's gray.
The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame inducted its class for the year on Saturday. They invited me a long time ago, and it turned out to be the same weekend as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. So when my company offered me one of its seats at the Correspondents’ Dinner, I declined.
It sounds like a humblebrag, or a double brag, to say my state honored me and I turned down the event in Washington. Some people make a point of not going. (Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security advisor, wrote that it was “the kind of ritual that you complain about while desperately seeking an invitation.”) But I’m not claiming the moral high ground, since I’ve been to the dinner on occasion.
The debate over the dinner is a black-and-white discussion of a subject that is gray. Its organizers are right that the event helps reporters cultivate sources, which helps inform the rest of us. Its critics are right that journalists inviting high officials to a high-fashion party does not seem like adversarial journalism. My colleague Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, elegantly synthesizes these two assertions: reporters ask awkward questions all year long, and it’s also useful for them to get to know the people they’re covering. (“It’s a weird event,” she says, that is “also a good sourcing opportunity.”) I’ve never loved the optics; I suppose it would annoy fewer people it were more egalitarian—say, a barbecue in a Rock Creek Park.
When I went in the past, I did see it as cultural anthropology—watching political and media figures practice their customs. Sometimes I’ve done some work, meeting someone who later helped me get information to the public. Occasionally I’ve done something that felt right. Once, given a chance to invite some potential news source as news organizations do, I instead followed the suggestion of a senior colleague, and invited a U.S. Army lieutenant I knew who’d been wounded by a bomb in Afghanistan, along with his wife who’d been helping him recover.
The truth is that my job is to live in the gray zones. I’ve looked for stories in underground mines, prisons, war-torn cities, swamps and the government offices of authoritarian states. I’ve talked with warlords, war criminals, and also their prisoners and victims. I visited the house of an opium trafficker who supported the Taliban. He served me tea, and it was lucky for me that the customs of his country called on him to treat me as a guest instead of something worse. Why would I not also look for stories amid the Washington elite?
But I have good memories of the dinners I missed. Washingtonians who are not invited hold events of their own that night. Once I attended a dinner party at the home of a scholar whose guests included diplomats I needed to know. We had actual conversations in a room that was quiet enough to hear them. Another year, a Pakistani charity invited me to speak at its event—and the crowd, learning I’d passed up the Correspondents’ Dinner to join them, gave me an ovation.
The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame will now count as one of those memories. Journalists, their family members and friends gathered for lunch. Those honored talked of giving voice to the voiceless.
This photo shows me with another person honored: Dorothy Leavell, the publisher of the Chicago Crusader and Gary Crusader—the latter in Gary, Indiana. She’s been involved with the historic Black-owned newspapers for sixty-two years, most of them as the publisher. Her employees included Chuck Deggans, a columnist and the father of my NPR colleague Eric Deggans. (Eric and I talked about this; he was in Washington, attending the dinner I missed, a perfect thing for a cultural critic to experience once in awhile.)
Leavell said that in her youth she briefly attended college: “I thought I was going to be a psychiatric social worker.” As it worked out, “I got to be one without the degree.” This is how she felt about serving the communities who bought her papers.
In addition to my family—I got to give a shoutout to my mom—I sat with three student journalists from Purdue University. They told me of a delightful assignment they were given: go out into the streets of West Lafayette, Indiana, and interview completely random people. Everyone has a story, if you know how to listen.
This resembles something I do! At election time I go to politically interesting places and knock on doors to talk with voters. Whatever people say becomes my story.
And I think that’s the answer to the question about journalists spending time with elites. Of course reporters talk with powerful people and try to understand them. The rest of us need to know about them. But it’s vital that we also talk with everyone else, to be sure we understand the full story.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must, where I have again exceeded my 400-word limit. I also turned on paid subscriptions, and some of you have generously offered support for the writing; for now I’m keeping posts free for all, like a public radio broadcast that some people support but everyone can get.
You tell the stories so well - thank you