More than three weeks after a man stormed the Washington Hilton lobby during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and opened fire, prosecutors said he was trying to kill President Donald Trump, and the association still has not announced a new date. Weijia Jiang of CBS News—who said she was covering Trump that night and was among those hit by shots—said the WHCA “continues to weigh options for rescheduling the event,” according to reporting from China, where she was then covering Trump.
Jiang had earlier said, “We will do this again.” Trump, for his part, said on social media that the dinner would be rescheduled within 30 days—though the association is the entity that decides whether and how to stage the event. With an original guest list estimated at close to 3,000 people, the reporting suggested a full-scale restart may be difficult to execute on a compressed timeline.
A person familiar with the situation said WHCA board members were looking at smaller venues, with the understanding that any rescheduled event would likely be pared down. The reporting said a return to the Washington Hilton—or a full-scale dinner anywhere—is not foreseen, citing both financial and security concerns.
The debate among media and security experts is not just whether the dinner can be rescheduled; it is also whether it should. For critics, one issue is whether the optics of reporters and officials mixing so soon after an attack undermine public trust and press credibility.
Kelly McBride, ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, had written before the dinner that it was a “bad look,” and she said she still feels that way. She said the event “undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it looks like we are pals with the people we cover.” McBride also described the attack itself as “deeply unfortunate,” adding that a Secret Service officer was shot and was recovering.
McBride said the challenge now is managing optics and that security requirements could complicate any decision to stage another gathering. “You’d have to make the Secret Service happy,” she said. “I don’t know you do that unless it is in a government facility. But it can’t be in a government facility.” She argued that allowing the appearance of compromising the WHCA’s credibility would pose a problem, and she said the president’s presence—any U.S. president—overshadows the event’s stated purpose.
Security experts interviewed in the reporting disagreed that the original dinner raised serious security problems, and they said the Secret Service response was effective. Jeff James, a retired Secret Service officer who now runs a security company, said the first attempt was handled safely and that the gunman never reached the same floor as Trump. James said the attacker was stopped within about 30 feet of reaching the middle perimeter and never came close to being within handgun range, let alone shotgun range, calling the response a clear success.
Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent and lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, similarly said the response was successful and that the Secret Service was prepared for a “lone wolf” scenario like the one that occurred. The reporting said the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, was staying in the hotel at the time.
Other criticism focused on whether the dinner sufficiently emphasized press freedom and the threats journalists face. One attendee that night was Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive officer of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She said she attended to keep reminding people of the importance of press freedom but said she was struck by how little emphasis the event puts on that subject.
Ginsberg said the dinner is an “extremely expensive social event” during a period when journalists are being laid off at high numbers. She said her concern is that the press freedom message often does not match the seriousness of the threats journalists face, citing that CPJ reported last year as its deadliest year on record for journalists, and describing additional pressures including online harassment, arrests of journalists covering protests, and raids by the FBI.
Ginsberg said she fears the event raises “a toast to press freedom” without the “courage to stand up in its defense when it actually gets threatened.” Former CBS News executive Marcy McGinnis, who co-founded Exact Communication, said she did not think the dinner should be rescheduled for a practical reason, because the money raised for scholarships had already been raised.
McGinnis said she was troubled by optics but added that journalists who believe in “true journalism” and holding power to account can still do their jobs even when they cover someone who “hobnobbed” at the dinner. She also supported the idea that the decision should take credibility into account, including how an event might appear to align the WHCA with the White House.
One scenario that Trump raised in the aftermath—holding the dinner in a White House ballroom—was described in the reporting as not being on the table, in part because of ongoing concerns about credibility. McBride said it “can never be in the ballroom” for the WHCA to maintain credibility, and the reporting said the Trump administration has cited the ballroom issue while pressing preservationists in litigation related to a $400 million project on the site of the former East Wing.
Jiang told Columbia Journalism Review in an article published Monday that she did not think the WHCA could do nothing. She said the board members “unanimously agreed that we have to do something,” whether it is an event to execute its program, including awards and scholarships, or a dinner, and she said letting the issue “pass” would not be an option.
Even as the WHCA weighs future plans, the reporting said one attendee would not be returning. Ginsberg said, “I’m never going to another,” and she said she has talked with colleagues from other organizations about the need to spotlight First Amendment rights and the importance of a free press in a different way—adding that she does not think the dinner approach is that next step.