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Merriman Smith’s Reporting Made Him a Legend But Some Journalists Now Question His Attitudes Toward Women and Blacks

March 11, 2022

From a Washington Post story by media writer Paul Farhi headlined “His reporting on the Kennedy assassination made him a legend. Then a press group looked into his past.”:

Merriman Smith was a distinguished White House correspondent for decades, but he cemented his place in journalism history on a bright afternoon in 1963.

Traveling in the press-pool car as President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade wound through Dallas that day, Smith heard the crackle of gunfire. He reacted instinctively, grabbing the car’s “radiotelephone” before other reporters to file a brief but world-shaking scoop to his editors: “Three shots fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in downtown Dallas.”…”

The White House’s New Press Briefing Seat Chart Says a Lot About Where Each Reporter Stands

February 3, 2022

From a Washington Post story by Paul Farhi headlined “The White House’s new press briefing seat chart says a lot about where each reporter stands”:

The Daily Mail is in. BuzzFeed and Breitbart are out.

The conservative Catholic EWTN network is in, and so is the LGBTQ-friendly Washington Blade. But the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune and the Russian Tass news agency won’t get seats in the White House briefing room.

The White House Correspondents’ Association has laid out new seating assignments for reporters who attend daily briefings and news conferences. It’s the first time since 2017 that the journalists’ organization, which controls the 49 press seats in the cramped James S. Brady Briefing Room, has rejiggered who sits where, or doesn’t sit anywhere.

Merriman Smith’s Reporting Made Him a Legend But Some Journalists Now Question His Attitudes Toward Women and Blacks

The White House’s New Press Briefing Seat Chart Says a Lot About Where Each Reporter Stands

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