Reporters fume at White House ‘quote approval’ rules

With help from Allie Bice

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If you’ve read a quote from an administration official in a newspaper or a wire story recently, there’s a good chance that the White House communications team had an opportunity to edit it first.

That’s because the Biden White House frequently demands that interviews with administration officials be conducted on grounds known colloquially as “background with quote approval,” according to five reporters who cover the White House for outlets other than POLITICO.

In practice, that means the information from an interview can be used in the story, but in order for the person’s name to be attached to a quote, the reporter must transcribe the quotes they want and then send them to the communications team to approve, veto or edit them.

West Wing Playbook must make a confession here. We have participated in such arrangements too. The other week, the White House asked for background with quote approval for an interview with White House communications director KATE BEDINGFIELD for a profile about speechwriter VINAY REDDY. Close to deadline and with our editors giving us side-eye about filing late, we agreed.

The practice allows the White House an extra measure of control as it tries to craft press coverage. At its best, quote approval allows sources to speak more candidly about their work. At its worst, it gives public officials a way to obfuscate or screen their own admissions and words.

The Biden White House isn’t the first to employ the practice. Many reporters say it’s reminiscent of the tightly controlled Obama White House. The Trump White House used it, too.

But reporters say Trump’s team did so less frequently than Biden’s team — which also used the tactic during the campaign — and a number of current White House reporters have become increasingly frustrated by what they see as its abuse. “The rule treats them like coddled Capitol Hill pages and that’s not who they are or the protections they deserve,” said one reporter.

“Every reporter I work with has encountered the same practice,” said another.

But, as is often the case with the unwieldy White House press corps, there is a collective action problem. Reporters are reluctant to say no to using background with quote approval because it could put them at a disadvantage with their competitors. “The only way the press has the power to push back against this is if we all band together,” said the first reporter. At least one White House reporting team has been talking internally about reaching out to other outlets to push the Biden team to stop the practice.

“Have any reporters talked about mutinying?” the second reporter asked us. “If you start fomenting an insurrection, keep me updated.”

Reached for comment, White House spokesperson MICHAEL GWIN asked to go off the record.

Gwin later texted a statement from press secretary JEN PSAKI. “We would welcome any outlet banning the use of anonymous background quotes that attack people personally or speak to internal processes from people who don’t even work in the Administration,” she said. “At the same time, we make policy experts available in a range of formats to ensure context and substantive detail is available for stories. If outlets are not comfortable with that attribution for those officials they of course don’t need to utilize those voices.”

PETER BAKER, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, said he remembers the practice beginning with reporters going back to sources and asking if a blind quote could be moved on the record. “What started out as an effort by reporters to get more transparency, to get people on the record more, to use fewer blind quotes, then got taken by the White House, each successive White House, as a way of taking control of your story,” he said.

“So instead of transparency, suddenly, the White House realized: ‘Hey, this quote approval thing is a cool thing. We can now control what is in their stories by refusing to allow them use anything without our approval. And it’s a pernicious, insidious, awful practice that reporters should resist.” Baker conceded that he’s no purist. He has agreed to quote approval before but believes reporters ought to push back more.

At times, news outlets have tried to fight back. The New York Times barred the practice in 2012 after one of its own reporters, JEREMY PETERS, wrote a story about how quote approval had become “standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House.”

“The practice risks giving readers a mistaken impression that we are ceding too much control over a story to our sources,” the Times memo on the subject read. “In its most extreme form, it invites meddling by press aides and others that goes far beyond the traditional negotiations between reporter and source over the terms of an interview.”

The Times told West Wing Playbook that the 2012 memo remains their policy but they declined to comment on how rigorously they enforce it or if their reporters have always followed it when dealing with the Biden White House.

The White House team has “repeatedly objected to background interviews with quote approval” since Biden took office, DANIELLE RHOADES HA, a Times spokesperson, wrote in an email to West Wing Playbook, adding that The Times “has succeeded at times in getting interviews put on the record.”

In 2012, the Associated Pressalso told Poynter that the outlet didn’t permit quote approval and that their reporters don’t allow sources to say, “I want those three sentences you want to use sent over to me to be put through my rinse cycle.” The AP’s JULIE PACE told West Wing Playbook that remains their policy. She noted that the Poynter article also said “that AP reporters can conduct interviews on background and then negotiate to get certain parts on the record.”

The 2012 New York Times article on quote approval stirred debate, but Peters himself isn’t sure it changed much. In a phone call, he said that “after the story ran it didn’t take that long for me to notice that operatives were asking for quote approval once again.”

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PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA

With the Partnership for Public Service

WILSON JERMAN was a butler for 11 presidents in the White House, before passing away of Covid-19 last year.

Here’s a really tough one — who was the first and last president Jerman worked for?

(Answer is at the bottom.)

Psaki bomb

TODAY’S DOOCY QUESTION — Fox News’ PETER DOOCY (read CHRIS CADELAGO’s great profile of him if you missed it on Friday) asked Psaki in today’s briefing whether enhanced federal unemployment benefits are creating a disincentive for Americans to return to work, as some corporate executives have alleged.

“Is the White House creating an incentive just to stay home?” Doocy asked, citing a Bloomberg News story that reported that “anyone who previously made less than $32,000 per year is better off financially in the near term receiving unemployment benefits” instead of returning to work.

Psaki responded that “the majority of economists” don’t think the enhanced unemployment benefits, which began under the Trump administration, are “a major driver” of people not returning to work and “that there are other factors, bigger factors” that contributed to the disappointed April jobs report released on Friday. In other words: it is *a* factor.

THE BUREAUCRATS

WANTED: NEW PENTAGON NERD — The head of the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service will step down next month after more than two years that saw the “SWAT team of nerds” more than double in size as it took on new projects involving drone warfare, satellites and Covid-19 response, MARTIN MATISHAK report.

BRETT GOLDSTEIN, who was appointed the digital service’s second-ever director in 2019, will finish his “nerd tour of duty” at the end of June, he told POLITICO on Monday. Deputy Director KATIE OLSON will become the unit’s acting chief.

MORE DISCLOSURES: One of the joys of White House financial disclosures is the glimpses they give into what staffers made in the private sector before taking pay cuts in the name of public service.

Today’s edition: CHRIS SLEVIN, who works in the White House legislative affairs office, made about $414,000 last year in his previous job as a vice president at the Economic Innovation Group, the advocacy group co-founded by SEAN PARKER of Facebook fame.

Agenda Setting

UNDER PRESSURE — The Biden administration has publicly weighed in on the deteriorating security situation in east Jerusalem, after weeks of private engagement. The recent public moves may have helped nudge Israel into taking steps to defuse tensions, NAHAL TOOSI reports, but activists, analysts and several of Biden’s fellow Democrats in Congress — including progressive favorites Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.) and Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) — say the administration should do more.

Advise and Consent

MARK YOUR CALENDARS — Tonight, the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee is voting on JEWEL HAIRSTON BRONAUGH’s nomination to be deputy secretary of Agriculture. If confirmed, she would be the first Black woman to hold the position.

Tomorrow, the Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on two DOD nominations: MICHAEL McCORD to be the Pentagon’s comptroller and RONALD MOULTRIE to be undersecretary for intelligence and security.

And the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will hold a hearing with ADRIANNE TODMAN, Biden’s nominee to be deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development and NURIA FERNANDEZ, his nominee to be federal transit administrator at the Department of Transportation.

What We're Reading

Biden administration scrambles to respond to cyberattack on critical pipeline (CNN’s Kevin Liptak)

Biden administration revives anti-bias protections in health care for transgender people (The Post’s Amy Goldstein)

Treasury will give states a lot of power to decide how to spend $350 billion in Covid relief funds (CNBC’s Thomas Franck)

Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the future of transportation (The Verge’s Andrew J. Hawkins)

What We're Watching

Biden will sit down with LAWRENCE O’DONNELL on MSNBC Wednesday at 10 p.m. as part of the network’s “Vaccinating America” town hall.

Where's Joe

He delivered remarks on the economy in the East Room, with Vice President KAMALA HARRIS in attendance. Later in the afternoon, he met Sens. TOM CARPER (D-Del.) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) to discuss the American Jobs Plan.

Where's Kamala

She met with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD in the Ward Room.

The Oppo Book

Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG and Rep. ELISE STEFANIK (R-N.Y.), Rep. LIZ CHENEY’s heir apparent in Republican House leadership, go way back. The two were friends while they were studying at Harvard in the early 2000s, according to theAlbany Times Union.

Both Buttigieg and Stefanik were members of Harvard’s Institute of Politics Student Advisory Council and worked together on a national polling project while they were students, studying the views of college students on politics and public service.

A spokesperson for Stefanik confirmed that the two met for coffee at least once.

Though Buttigieg and Stefanik are now on different ends of the political spectrum and may not be as close as they once were, they do appear to keep in touch — Buttigieg visited Stefanik’s congressional office back in 2015. Buttigieg’s office declined to comment.

HELP US OUT — It’s been interesting digging through memoirs and college newspaper clips about Biden administration officials. But we want your help too. Do you have a story — that’s potentially embarrassing but not too mean or serious — that we should use for an “Oppo Book” item? Email us [email protected].

Trivia Answer

Jerman started working at the White House under President DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER and ended his service under President BARACK OBAMA.

We want your tips, but we also want your feedback as we transition to West Wing Playbook. What should be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know.

Edited by Emily Cadei