White House Reporter Cites Health Risk
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White House Reporter Cites Health Risk
April Ryan is doing her work from home. You haven’t seen her recently at the White House press briefings, where she has been the target of attacks by President Trump and his press secretaries, forcing her to hire protection.
Ryan wasn’t there when Trump lashed out at Yamiche Alcindor of the “PBS News Hour“on Sunday. Instead, she told Journal-isms, she is supporting Alcindor in personal conversations with her.
“My support is being there for her,” Ryan said by telephone. “This is a unique club,” listing other White House correspondents with whom she regularly communicates, such as Abby Phillip and Jim Acosta, both of CNN, and Brian Karem of Playboy.
However, Ryan says, “I am one of those who have chosen to stay home. I have a colleague who says she has it. I am one of those who has pre-exsting conditions. There are a lot of familiar faces that are not going to the White House. Why am I going to go into the line of fire?”
Ryan, a divorced mother of two, is 52; Alcindor is 33, perceived as less susceptible to the virus. “I am taking all the recommended precautions to continue doing this work as carefully as possible,” Alcindor messaged Journal-isms.
Ryan, known for asking race-related questions that others ignore, was Journalist of the Year for the National Association of Black Journalists in 2017. She is in demand as a speaker. She reports for the American Urban Radio Networks and is a commentator for CNN, with whom she says she just signed a new contract.
Ryan is not the only White House correspondent not present at the briefings.
“It’s a relative ghost town,” Jonathan Karl , chief White House correspondent for ABC News and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (pictured), told Journal-isms by telephone on Tuesday.
“If you can work from home, please” do so, Karl said the WHCA board told members on March 15. So far two members of the association are suspected of having contracted the virus. The first has not been identified, but late Tuesday Karl announced that the test results were negative. The second, Hunter Walker of Yahoo, announced the news himself.
“@whca notified members when there was a first suspected case of COVID 19 in the press corps,” Walker tweeted on Saturday. “As far as I can tell they have not notified anyone about my suspected case. That’s part of why I am trying to get the word out. I was there 3/16.”
To my colleagues who continue to cover the White House under these conditions. I admire you greatly and you should know multiple outlets have dropped from pool and briefing coverage due to safety concerns. This is not being communicated really. No one should feel pressure to go
— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) March 28, 2020
Karl said the association has taken a series of steps in the last two weeks:
- The networks agreed to have just one of them provide all camera crews, sharing the shots with the others. That led to “radically” reducing the number of people in the room.
- To comply with international advice to reduce the distance between people during the pandemic, every other seat in the briefing room is being left vacant. Of the 49 seats, only 14 people are being seated. There is no more congregating in the aisles and in the back.
- Networks are asked to send only one reporter. ABC, for example, many days had five.
Some outlets are not sending anyone. There are “some that have simply decided it’s too dangerous.”
Others are just changing strategy. “AP is rotating reporters in and out of the White House,” Lauren Easton, global director of media relations and corporate communications for the Associated Press, messaged Journal-isms. “Reporters who are not physically there are working remotely and not slowing down one iota. “
“AP’s coverage of the White House is as robust as ever at this critical time.”
Ryan lives in Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan issued a stay-at-home order effective Monday. She continues to report for AURN. “I’m like everybody else,” she said from home, “looking for stuff online and in stores” — medicines, cleaners and the like.
Sharing a photo with the lower part of her face covered, she added, “I bought the mask online. . . . My life is my family and I have to be here for them and protect them.”
- National Association of Black Journalists: Joint Statement from NABJ and JAWS on the President’s Treatment of Yamiche Alcindor
- Maxwell Tani, Daily Beast: CNN Chief Jeff Zucker Defends Not Cutting Away From Trump’s Coronavirus Pressers
