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Usually, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner features Hollywood stars, a zinger-filled comedy set and a public display of comity between the White House and the press corps that covers it.
On Saturday, the dinner had no comedian and no president. Among the smattering of celebrities on hand was Michael Chiklis, whose best-known television role, in 'The Shield,' concluded in 2008.
'It's just us,' Eugene Daniels, the association's president and an MSNBC host, told his fellow journalists at the start of the night.
The reporters who spoke from the dais emphasized the importance of the First Amendment, garnering repeated ovations from the black-tie crowd. Levity came in the form of clips from past years, when presidents still turned up and cracked wise about the press and themselves.
Hand-wringing about the dinner, once the apex of the capital's social calendar, is as much a Washington tradition as the corporate-sponsored parties that surround it. But as media institutions grapple with an onslaught from President Trump — who has sued and threatened television networks, barred The Associated Press from presidential events and upended the day-to-day workings of the White House press corps — the notion of a booze-soaked celebration felt particularly jarring.
'The mood and reality sucks,' said Jim VandeHei, the journalist and news executive who helped create Politico and then Axios, two stalwarts of the Beltway media.
'No president attending, no comedian to make fun of all of us, TV networks buckling under government pressure, a top producer quitting over corporate interference and the public sour on the media and government,' Mr. VandeHei said. 'Enjoy the weekend!'
It is true that, in the last several days alone, the head of '60 Minutes' resigned as CBS's owner considered a multimillion-dollar payment to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that aids reporters living under autocrats, issued a safety advisory for journalists planning to visit the United States. And on Friday afternoon, hours before the first wave of weekend parties, the Justice Department announced that it would subpoena reporters' phone records and compel their testimony in leak investigations.
Maybe journalists could use a moment or two to relax.
'Our clients work so hard covering today's nonstop news cycle, and once a year we throw a big weekend of parties to honor them for their work,' said Rachel Adler, the head of news at Creative Artists Agency, who represents television journalists like Andrea Mitchell and Audie Cornish and was the co-host of a jampacked soiree on Friday at a private Georgetown club. 'Why would this year be any different?'
Tammy Haddad, a Washington impresario whose annual Saturday garden party went ahead unabated and well-attended, said that for all the tensions over press access and independence, the weekend was still a chance for community. 'Some chose to stay away, but there are opportunities to make new connections and find some common ground,' she said. (Her guests included the editor Tina Brown, the chef Bobby Flay and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor recently sworn in to lead Medicare and Medicaid.)
Still, the correspondents' dinner itself carried a more serious tenor than in years past. Some of the loudest applause came for journalists at The A.P., which has been embroiled in a legal fight with the administration after Mr. Trump sought to restrict access to its reporters for using the term 'Gulf of Mexico' in its coverage.
Mr. Daniels pledged support to The A.P. and also to Voice of America, another outlet that has been the target of Mr. Trump's scorn. With no entertainer for the evening, Mr. Daniels served as the keynote speaker, calling for journalistic solidarity.
'What we are not is the opposition,' he said. 'What we are not is the enemy of the people. And what we are not is the enemy of the state.' He called journalists 'competitive and pushy,' but also 'human,' noting the effort that reporters make to ensure accurate information reaches the public.
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Eugene Daniels, the association's president and an MSNBC host, at the dinner on Saturday.
Credit...
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press
In interviews, top journalists at multiple news outlets said that it had been nearly impossible to convince celebrities and lawmakers to attend as guests. One reporter said that the list of people who had rejected invitations to join the publication's table was in the 'dozens.'
This is a dinner that once attracted the likes of George Clooney and Steven Spielberg. On Saturday, it seemed as if the most au courant actor in town was Jason Isaacs, the Englishman who played the dad on the latest edition of 'The White Lotus,' and whose character spent the season fantasizing about a murder-suicide.
Mark Leibovich, a correspondent for The Atlantic, said he found it refreshing to have an evening more focused on the act of reporting than a comedian's speech.
Still, he added, 'I wish we could have used the time we gained from that to all leave an hour earlier.'
The correspondents' association represents hundreds of journalists who regularly cover the workings of the White House. Its autonomy has been undermined repeatedly by the Trump administration, which broke precedent by handpicking which outlets are granted access to the 'pool' that covers smaller presidential events and has signaled plans to shake up the seating chart in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. (For decades, the correspondents' association has overseen the pool and the seating chart.)
In February, the group announced that a comedian, Amber Ruffin, the actress and talk-show host, would be the dinner's featured entertainer. Last month, Ms. Ruffin's appearance was canceled. She had appeared on a podcast where she referred to the Trump administration as 'kind of a bunch of murderers.'
Mr. Daniels said he wanted 'to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.'
Ms. Ruffin has since mocked the group for canceling her set, quipping: 'We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners — that's what it says in the First Amendment.'
In previous years — including in 2018, during Mr. Trump's first term — the White House press secretary attended the dinner and sat on the dais. Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump's current press secretary, said she had turned down an invitation.
On Friday, during an interview with the Axios reporter Mike Allen, Ms. Leavitt was asked to describe the news media in one word.
'Exhausted,' she said, with a smile.
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