SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
For more on all of this, we are joined by Bloomberg's Jeff Mason. He's a longtime White House correspondent and a past president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Jeff, good to talk to you.
JEFF MASON: Good to be with you.
DETROW: Let's start with this. What is your response to the White House's argument today that access to the White House is a privilege, not a right?
MASON: I would just reflect on the First Amendment and the fact that the Founders of the United States put it in the Constitution that there is freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And so the ability of reporters, including my colleagues at CNN and MS NOW and Politico, to report on what the president does and says and wants to do is protected. It's protected speech and it's protected in terms of the freedom of the press. And so that's what the Founders envisioned, and that's what we do, and that's why we show up. And all of our colleagues should have the ability to do that.
DETROW: I want to talk a little bit about the TV pool situation. Help people listening understand why this matters, why that affects the coverage, what people see of the president.
MASON: Well, let me explain what a pool is first. The WHCA created a pooling decades ago because the president holds events in spaces that aren't always big enough to get the entire press corps in. So there are 13 journalists that travel with the president wherever he goes - on Air Force One and go into the Oval office when he's holding events there. Part of that 13-member press pool is the TV pool, and that's made up of the five big networks, and they rotate which network takes their day or travels with the president.
And today, it was CNN's day. And instead of putting another network in, say, Fox or CBS or NBC or - among those five, they decided to not put anyone in out of solidarity with CNN. And that is a big deal because it means there wasn't video, as Scott was saying before, and it also shows solidarity amongst competing networks that work together on the pool but are also competing with each other for news and for viewers.
DETROW: I covered the White House for a bit. I filled those radio pool seats many times.
MASON: Yes, you did.
DETROW: And I will say when people ask me about covering the White House, one thing people asked a lot is, why don't you all stand up for each other more? When President Trump attacks a reporter, why don't you all defend that reporter? This is your colleague. This is your peer. And there have been calls for years for the White House press corps to push back a little bit more and stand up. I'll note, when you were the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, you said an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us. Why do you think a step like this wasn't taken until now?
MASON: It's a good question. I can tell you, because I've been in the leadership of the press corps, that it is hard to rally the entire press corps and all of these organizations together to make one decision and to back each other. I do think we back each other in practice every day by asking questions, asking follow-ups, for example, if the president is critical of one reporter. I know that I see some people on social media wishing that we would just walk out of the room or retort back to the president, but we show our support by asking a follow-up question and by sticking to our jobs of reporting the news.
DETROW: Any sense, from your personal perspective, why this step was taken now and not, say, when the AP - I mean, as down the middle and fair as you could be, the Associated Press - when the AP was blocked from access to parts of the White House. Why wasn't something as drastic as this taken?
MASON: Well, I appreciate you bringing that up 'cause not only was AP blocked, but the other wires were kicked out as well of our daily spots in the...
DETROW: Right.
MASON: ...Pool - Reuters and Bloomberg. So there's - it's frustrating, I think, sometimes to not feel that solidarity from the very beginning. But we're feeling and seeing it now, and that's important, and I hope to see that continue.
DETROW: Can you give us a sense of what these conversations were like during the first Trump administration? When you were on the WHCA board, you were the president, and President Trump tried to make similar moves. He took away CNN reporter Jim Acosta's hard pass, among other steps. They were ultimately overturned by courts, but the WHCA had a lot of conversations behind the scenes. What were those like?
MASON: We did, and I can give you a window into that even starting with the transition in 2016. There were people within Trump's orbit who were talking about or considering moving the press out of the press room entirely and taking the pool off of Air Force One. So I'm proud of those negotiations having led to us staying here. I also think it was reflective of something that people didn't necessarily know around Trump at the beginning, which was, he quite likes having the ability to say, hey, bring in the pool. I want this coverage, and having these long Cabinet meetings, for example, which were covered by the press corps.
Remember, this is a former reality television president, or reality television host - rather - who became president. So he's very keen to have cameras around. All of that said, he has maintained his criticism of the press and using the term fake news and enemy of the people, as Scott said earlier. And that rhetoric is damaging and has been deliberately damaging to the credibility of the press corps. And as I used to say when I was president of the association, I think the way we stand up against that is just by continuing to do robust and good work.
DETROW: One of the things that Trump has shown is how easy it is to go around the mainstream press. Do you think there's a downside here to this standoff, that the answer could be more people with YouTube streams who aren't professional journalists who don't have journalistic ethics?
MASON: Look, I've covered the White House for 18 years. I remember at the beginning of the Obama years being outraged as a reporter when the White House first put something out on Twitter instead of sending it to us by email. And, of course, that's ludicrous now to think about.
DETROW: Yeah.
MASON: So everything changes. But, you know, I don't think you can have the same reach with a YouTuber as you can with all of the major media organizations. And so I think that that will end up being something that this White House and this president probably reflect on.
DETROW: One thing I'm pretty aware of, and I'm sure you are as well, and we can just work through this together, is that a lot of people in the U.S. do not feel too bad for Washington reporters, you know?
MASON: Yeah.
DETROW: What would you say to a skeptical listener who says this is just more self-important whining from the media?
MASON: Well, I'm OK with that, Scott. I'm fine with working this out with you. But my answer to that is, again, to look back at the Constitution - is that this profession and the work that we do is part of a healthy democracy. And it doesn't matter if some people, including the president of the United States, don't like our coverage. What's important is that we have the right to do that coverage and continue to report on the president, the presidency and the White House, as well as the rest of the administration.
And I would use that, also, as a moment to just mention that this attack on the press is not limited to just the White House press corps. It's been part of a pattern, including the Pentagon, including the Treasury Department, which just in the last few weeks prevented Bloomberg and The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal from covering a finance ministers meeting.
DETROW: That's Bloomberg's Jeff Mason, longtime White House correspondent. Thank you so much.
MASON: My pleasure.
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