"Get to the Back! " A Black Reporter's Tea on Being in The White House Reporting Pool
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WASHINGTON - JANUARY 7: Former President George H.W. Bush, President-elect Barack Obama, President George W. Bush, and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter pose together in the Oval Office on January 7, 2009 at the White House in Washington, D.C. This was only the fifth time that five presidents have appeared together.
I recently found myself at the White House, reporting a series of freelance stories for this publication.
Walking onto the grounds on what was an exceptionally warm day, seeing the grand old white building framed by its ever-familiar landscaping, everything came back to me. The awe and exhilaration. The determination and fear. The isolation and anger.
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I flew on Air Force One enough to dread having to do so because reporters on the presidential plane are typically on “pool” duty and must closely track the president’s movements and actions for a specific period of time and file a report for the pool of journalists who did not have that access. It’s a rotating responsibility shared by those in the White House press corps, and the task is hugely important. The pool reporter is the eyes and ears of the media everywhere; if something happens to the president, that pool reporter is there to chronicle it. Oh, and that pool reporter still must file a story for their own publication.
Traveling on the press plane that followed Air Force One was less stressful, and, for most reporters, a bit more enjoyable.
But that wasn’t always the case for me. Being a Black man in the largely white, highly intelligent - and self-obsessed - White House press corps was a bit like being the unathletic kid with pimples in middle school gym class.
I’m 56 years old now, but, to this day, when I see reporters on television who were kind to me when we shared the White House beat, I remember their kindness. And I have not forgotten any of the slights, the conversations that stopped when I came by, the extended “remember that time” stories told in my presence that would include others but not me because I wasn’t there. I remember the rudeness - to me and to logistics people in the places to which we traveled.
As I said, I consider having been asked to be a White House correspondent a very high honor, a significant privilege. I love presidential history, and having a chance to cover that history as it unfolded was an intellectual delight almost beyond comparison.
I did not expect other members of the press corps to be my pals. We worked for large news organizations that expected strong, detailed coverage. To the degree that we could - in an environment where the White House itself dispensed much of the information we reported - we were expected to compete to provide our organizations with scoops and perspectives that brought value.
I knew all of that going in, and I did my best to keep The Globe at least on par with its competitors when I was on the beat.
But going to the White House each day, being ignored and shunned, it took a toll.
There were at least a couple other Black journalists in the press corps with me. One was in radio, and the other was a print journalist like me.
I did not know them well, and I did not want to burden them with helping me sort out any challenges I was facing. They likely had their own ways of navigating the largely-white, privileged environment of the White House press corps.
I’m not naming names here. Perhaps I will if I write a book on this experience, but I’ve never been arrogant enough to think people will be that interested in one unknown reporter’s extended perspective on managing even the highest-profile beat in the country.
I can relay some of what I experienced without those names.
On my very first trip on Air Force One - I believe we were flying to Ohio - I remember being very excited. I was hyped in that way journalists get hyped when they have to balance their own excitement with the demands of getting the job done.
I hadn’t yet figured out that the little booklets journalists were given before takeoff had all of the details on where we would write our stories and how much time we had to write them.
Toward the end of the event we were covering - some speech being given by then-president George W. Bush - I noticed a reporter for The Associated Press banging away at her computer. We were in an outside area near tents, and the reporter was seated in a folding chair.
I asked her if this was where we should file our pool reports and our story. She ignored my question. Thinking that maybe she didn’t hear me - but deep down knowing that she probably had - I asked again.
“Hey!” she snapped. “I’m busy here.”
Reporters can be cranky on deadline. I know this and would have chalked it up to simply that IF this same reporter didn’t go out of her way to avoid even the most casual conversation with me in the future.
I never understood why. I just put it out of my mind.
Another time, after a press conference in the White House East Room, I was walking away from the complex with a small group of reporters. We were talking about the press conference topic, and I piped up with something innocuous.
One reporter - a woman who worked for The New York Times - turned to me, scrunched up her face and looked down at the lanyard we reporters wore making clear what organization we represented. Then she shook her head.
I knew what she was trying to convey: “Who the hell are you, and why are you talking?”
I slowed and let the group walk on ahead without me.
I began to take tales of some of these microaggressions home to my wife, Shelia. She knew that I was thrilled to be in such close proximity to presidential history, but she knew, too, that the job came with a ton of personal and professional pressure.
Wayne Washington in the White House with Laura and former President Bush
One day, she was driving me to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where Air Force One is parked and not far from where we lived, when we spotted a television news reporter whose rudeness I had frequently noted to Shelia.
The woman was rolling a piece of luggage toward the area where we reporters were supposed to meet in advance of a trip. She saw Shelia coming in our minivan and continued to walk in the path vehicles took to drop off people. She was not getting out of the way and only casually looked our way despite the fact that she was impeding us.
Shelia sped up, only slightly, but it was enough to get the reporter to quicken her steps. She turned to us, offended that we wouldn’t simply wait for her to stroll on out of our way.
“Little witch with a B,” Shelia muttered.
In Orlando, as Bush began to campaign more for re-election, I was on pool duty. After the president’s speech, I was to hustle behind a curtain and follow a path to press vans that would take us to the plane.
I put my notebook in my blazer pocket and was the first person in the van. I climbed in and took a seat on the bench row just behind the driver.
Minutes later, a pool photographer hustled back, carrying his equipment.
“What are you doing there?” he angrily asked me. “Get to the back.”
By this point, I had endured far more little digs and slights than I’ve relayed here. And I wasn’t having any more of it.
Somebody was telling me - a reporter, yes, but a Black man, too - to get to the back of the van.
The photographer was Asian American, but I still viewed his order as crude and possibly racist.
I reacted with fury. I refused to move from my seat and told the guy that, if he didn’t leave me alone, he’d find himself…defecating…his camera equipment. I was, as you might imagine, significantly more colorful in expressing this sentiment.
The photographer went to the head of the White House Press Association and complained in an effort to get my hard pass - the credential that allows reporters relatively easy access to the White House - pulled.
Fortunately for me, the head of the association decided nothing so drastic was warranted. He chalked it up to the stress of us all just trying to do our jobs. But he also did what that photographer failed to do - he explained why I was being asked to go to a rear seat.
Photographers have long sat on the bench I had occupied so they could quickly exit the van if something happened that required a picture. Print reporters like me typically sat in the back.
I didn’t know that, and dude just rolled up on a Black man, yelling for him to “get to the back.”
Whether it’s a White House correspondent or any other Black man, yelling an order for him to get to the back isn’t likely to be greeted with meek compliance.
A final taste, literally, of what colored my experience:
I again can’t remember where we were, but it was late morning, and a speaker was addressing an audience before introducing the president. Reporters were behind a curtain in a nearby story filing center.
When the president and nationally known reporters show up at most places, it’s big news. Local folks get excited and do what they can to make the president and traveling journalists welcome.
In the filing room, food preparers stood behind a row of food trays prepared for us reporters. A couple reporters walked up, opened the top of the containers and gave each other quizzical looks.
“Barbeque?” one said, loudly, not far from people prepared to serve us that food. “Who eats barbecue this time of day?”
I was mortified. I didn’t feel like eating barbecue. I didn’t want to run the risk of making a mess and then having to wear that mess in the presence of the press corps and possibly the president.
But I asked for some barbecue, and I loudly thanked the people standing behind the trays.
“We really appreciate it,” I said.
I knew it was a lie. Many of us did NOT appreciate it. I just couldn’t let that earlier rudeness stand.
I’ve got so many memories tied to covering the White House, and being in that building again was an emotional experience.
I’m not the first Black reporter to have covered a White House. Not even close. So many endured God-only-knows-what-all so people like me could have their shot. My slights likely don’t come close to even approaching what they experienced.
I am enormously grateful to them, and, in the brief time I covered the White House, I did my best to honor the path they laid down.
The White House press room was nearly empty when I stopped by on my freelance reporting trip.
A kind young executive staff member took some pictures of me there and outside of the building.
I lingered before leaving, thinking back to the experience I had had in the most famous residence in the world.
It occurred to me that, other than a holiday reception shot of me with a smiling George W. and Laura Bush, I don’t have pictures from my White House days.
All of it - the travel, the stories, the thrills and the chills - it all lives in my head and in my heart.
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