(I) A journalist called upon to ask a question will ask a single question and then will yield the floor to other journalists;
(2) At the discretion of the President or other White House official taking questions, a follow-up question or questions may be permitted; and where a follow-up has been allowed and asked, the questioner will then yield the floor;
(3) “Yielding the floor” includes, when applicable, physically surrendering the microphone to White House staff for use by the next questioner;
(4) Failure to abide by any of rules (1)-(3) may result in suspension or revocation of the journalist’s hard pass.
The Trump administration claimed that Acosta disrupted the press conference when he refused to stop trying to ask a followup question to the president. Trump called him “rude,” and Acosta initially declined to hand his microphone over to a White House intern when she attempted to grab it from him.
In the aftermath, Trump derided what he said was a lack of “decorum,” and over the weekend said that rules were being put in place. But in a hearing last week, CNN’s lead attorney Ted Boutrous said that it was the president who “set the tone” at the press conference, and it was he who contributed to its raucous atmosphere by interrupting reporters and, in some cases, berating them.
Sanders said that they issued the written guidelines “with a degree of regret,” but she and Shine blamed CNN and Acosta for forcing the issue.
“We would prefer to continue hosting White House press conferences in reliance on a set of understood professional norms, and we believe the overwhelming majority of journalists covering the White House share that preference,” Shine and Sanders wrote in their letter on Monday. “But, given your insistence that shared practices be replaced by ‘explicit…standards,’ this letter attempts to convert into rules the widely understood practices described in our prior letter, and which your counsel inexplicably concludes were non-existent.”
Shine and Sanders also held out the possibility of a more extensive code of conduct.
They added that “the view from here is that White House interaction with the press is, and generally should be, subject to a kind of natural give and take. President Trump believes strongly in the First Amendment and interacts with the press in just such a way. It would be a great loss for all if, instead of this give and take, and instead of relying on the professionalism of White House journalists, we were compelled to devise a lengthy and detailed code of conduct for White House events.”
The rules, though, already are drawing criticism from some Washington reporters.
Todd Gillman, the Washington bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, wrote that “there is now a threat to ban reporters from the White House for asking a follow up question without permission even once.”
Chris Geidner, legal editor for BuzzFeed News, said “these rules would enable any even half-competent speaker to avoid answering any and all questions posed to them by the press. The @WHCA should strongly oppose this move by the White House.”
The White House Correspondents Association had no immediate comment.