White House reporters are seething over a policy that requires them to submit quotes from interviews with Biden administration officials to the communications team for approval, editing or veto, according to a report on Tuesday.
The White House is demanding that reporters who conduct interviews with administration officials do so under conditions known as “background with quote approval,” Politico reported.
The information from the interview can be used in a story, but for a reporter to be able to attach a name to the quote, the reporter must transcribe the comments and send them to the communications team, the report said.
At that point, the White House can approve them, edit them or veto their use.
Politico’s West Wing Playbook, which reported the practice, acknowledged that it participated in the arrangement when it did a piece about speechwriter Vinay Reddy that was up against a deadline.
And the report noted that the Obama administration and the Trump administration also used the arrangement, but the Trump communications team deployed it less often than the Biden White House.
The exercise is a carryover from the Biden presidential campaign and one that is irking White House reporters.
“The rule treats them like coddled Capitol Hill pages and that’s not who they are or the protections they deserve,” one reporter told Politico.
“Every reporter I work with has encountered the same practice,” another reporter said.
But while individual reporters have fumed over the arrangement, there has yet to be a coordinated response against it among the White House pool.
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