Five reporters who cover President Joe Biden's White House told Politico that interviews usually are conducted on grounds recognized as "background with quote approval."
Basically, that means for a person's name to be added to a quote, the reporter has to transcribe the quotes and send them to the White House communications office to get permission.
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Former President Barack Obama's White House employed the practice, as did former President Donald Trump's White House, with the latter doing so much more sparingly, according to reporters.
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"The rule treats [officials] like coddled Capitol Hill pages, and that’s not who they are or the protections they deserve," one White House reporter told the news outlet.
"Have any reporters talked about mutinying?" another reporter questioned. "If you start fomenting an insurrection, keep me updated."
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Giving the White House the power to confirm, edit, or deny quotes started as a way for reporters to get more transparency by requesting an official to add his or her name to a quote that had been given off the record.
"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 to use anything without our approval.' And it's a pernicious, insidious, awful practice that reporters should resist," stated Peter Baker, the longtime chief White House correspondent for the New York Times.
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Reporters are reluctant to evade the White House’s requirements to approve quotes because it could place them at a disadvantage with their opponents.
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"The only way the press has the power to push back against this is if we all band together," explained one reporter.
Politico said at least one reporting team has been talking internally about reaching out to different outlets to urge the Biden team to stop the method.
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested the use of anonymous background quotes in a statement after spokesperson Michael Gwin had been contacted about the policy and asked to go off the record.
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"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,” Psaki 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."
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