A number of media outlets regularly assigned to travel with President Trump have decided to stop doing so given the White House and the campaign’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post have all decided to stop sending reporters to travel with Trump as he returns to the campaign trail with Election Day only three weeks away, according to the New York Times. As Trump departed for his first campaign event since being diagnosed with the virus and his subsequent stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he entered Air Force One, where he had to walk past the reporters designated to go with him without a mask.
“White House reporters had safety concerns and were not comfortable traveling with the president at this time,” Elisabeth Bumiller, the New York Times’s Washington bureau chief, said in a statement, while a spokeswoman for the Washington Post said, “We continue to evaluate our coverage plans.”
These three news outlets are not the only ones who are balking at the idea of traveling with the president — BuzzFeed News, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and Hearst Newspapers have declined to send a reporter on Air Force One in recent days.
At least three White House reporters have tested positive for COVID-19 this month, which coincides with the president, first lady, and several White House officials also contracting the virus.
The White House Correspondents Association, the group that organizes the rotation of accredited reporters who travel with the president, has repeatedly sought additional precautionary measures and has encouraged those within the organization to work from home instead of at the White House for months.
“We are an association of individuals with different risk tolerances, health statuses, family obligations, and corporate policies, and it is critical that we consider all of those before embarking on a pool assignment,” the White House Correspondents Association board said in a statement days ago. “We are also all committed professionals who have worked under challenging circumstances to sustain the pool for the last seven months. Being there to ask the important questions is vital to the American public that relies on us for information.”
