White House Correspondents’ Association boots OAN from briefing rotation

The White House Correspondents’ Association said on Wednesday it was booting a media outlet from its rotation of news organizations that get seats in the White House briefing room after one of its reporters twice defied social-distancing policies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement emailed out toward the end of Wednesday’s coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, the WHCA board reminded members of its temporary rules, which restrict seating in the room to a rotation of only a little over a dozen journalists a day, separated by more than one seat in the room. The rules also bar journalists from standing along the sides or back of the room, which would typically be packed during a normal briefing.

“Under this policy, we have asked reporters who don’t have a seat not to attend press briefings,” the board’s note read.

“We are writing to inform you that the WHCA Board has voted this evening to remove a news outlet from the rotation for a seat in the briefing room,” it continued. “We did this because a reporter for this outlet twice attended press briefings in contravention of this policy. We do not take this action lightly. This is a matter of public safety.”

The statement did not name the outlet it was kicking out of the rotation, but only Chanel Rion, a correspondent for the fringe conservative cable channel One America News Network, was seen standing in the back of the room when the president called on her to ask a question.

Rion also attended the previous two days of news briefings, standing in the back of the back of the room on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Rion was approached by a representative for the WHCA who asked her to leave because she wasn’t in the rotation to cover that evening’s briefing. Rion refused, saying she was there “as a guest of Stephanie Grisham,” the White House press secretary, according to the Times.

President Donald Trump has in recent months begun to single out the network for praise over its glowing coverage of his administration and strident defenses of the president. During Trump’s impeachment, Rion traveled to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, where the two filmed a multipart series promoting unfounded conspiracy theories aimed at defending Trump against the allegations at the center of his impeachment.

Rion has most recently been panned for her line of questioning in daily briefings by the White House coronavirus task force. Several weeks ago, when Trump was under fire for referring to the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” because of where it originated, Rion asked the president whether he believed it was racist to refer to “Chinese food” as such.

She then accused “major left-wing media, even in this room,” of teaming up “with Chinese Communist Party narratives” about the virus, which has blossomed into a global pandemic. Afterward, Rion tweeted out a picture of a message she said someone had left on her desk in the White House press area criticizing her questions.

During Monday’s news briefing, when Trump called on Rion, she used the occasion to compare the death toll of coronavirus to the number of abortions in the country. She asked whether Trump supported conservative states that were barring the procedures by labeling them elective surgeries that need to be put off to conserve medical resources for seriously ill coronavirus patients. Trump demurred, saying he wanted to unify Democrats and Republicans to fight the outbreak.

At Tuesday’s briefing, Rion asked about how many clinical trials the administration would want to see for hydroxychloroquine — an antimalarial drug Trump has championed for fighting the coronavirus based on anecdotal results — before the government put its stamp of approval on it. The president didn’t field the question, instead deferring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the task force.