In a tense Washington, the dinner traded punchlines for a defense of the First Amendment and the free press Email not displaying correctly?
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The Poynter Report With Senior Media Writer Tom Jones
 

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No celebrities, but a clear message at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner

President of the White House Correspondents' Association Eugene Daniels poses for photographers as he arrives at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington on Saturday. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The White House Correspondents’ Association had its annual dinner on Saturday night. It’s usually a star-studded evening with a who’s who of celebrities and politicians, including the president. But this year was nothing like that. 

President Donald Trump skipped the event (as he did all four times during his first presidency), along with many other big names. The scheduled featured speaker — comedian and writer Amber Ruffin — was canceled last month following critical remarks of the Trump administration during a podcast.

WHCA president Eugene Daniels told the audience, “It’s just us,” referring to journalists.

There weren’t many big celebrities, certainly not like in years past when the likes of George Clooney, Bradley Cooper, Charlize Theron and Viola Davis attended.

The Associated Press’ Nicholas Riccardi wrote, “The stripped-down festivities Saturday night were a reflection of the somber tone in Washington at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, in which he has battled with the press on multiple fronts and wrested from the correspondents’ association the power to decide which outlets have the most access to Trump.”

This year’s dinner concentrated on press rights and standing up against the attacks on the media.

The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and Katie Robertson wrote, “The reporters who spoke from the dais emphasized the importance of the First Amendment, garnering repeated ovations from the black-tie crowd. Levity came in the form of clips from past years, when presidents still turned up and cracked wise about the press and themselves.”

In years past, featured speakers included comedy heavyweights such as Colin Jost, Trevor Noah, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert.

This year, Williams, the WHCA president, was the featured speaker. He defended journalism, saying, “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of the people. And what we are not is the enemy of the state.”

In the end, it was a much different WHCA dinner than in years past.

The Washington Post’s Roxanne Roberts wrote, “If you like earnest speeches about the critical role of Washington journalism in 2025, you probably would have loved Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner. If you were hoping for a rallying cry, a reason to think anything will change anytime soon or even a few cheap laughs, you’d be mostly out of luck.”

   

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Criticizing the coverage

Another notable moment from Saturday night’s WHCA dinner was comments from Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who criticized the media for not covering President Joe Biden’s health more closely. Thompson received the WHCA’s Aldo Beckman Award for overall excellence in White House coverage.

During his acceptance speech, he told the audience, “Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. President Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.”

Thompson said the press’ failure on the Biden story had its consequences.

“Some people trust us less because of it,” he said. “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it. … We should have done better."

It should be noted, however, that Thompson also said in his speech, “To my bones, I believe that reporting and the White House Correspondents' Association is as necessary as ever.”

Also worth noting: Thompson just co-authored a book with CNN’s Jake Tapper called “Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” That book is scheduled to be released May 20.

Awkward moment of the weekend

Former NFL head coach Bill Belichick and girlfriend Jordon Hudson, shown here at the NFL Honors award show in February. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Did you happen to catch “CBS News Sunday Morning” and its profile of former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who recently became the head football coach at the University of North Carolina? It was, uh, something.

Belichick is notorious for keeping the media at arm’s length, although he did show he has a personality over the past year in his many media appearances, including on ESPN’s Monday night “ManningCast” and in appearances on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil conducted the interview, and it took an awkward turn when the topic of Belichick’s girlfriend came up. Belichick is 73 and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, is 24. The relationship has become quite a talker, not only for the age difference, but because of Hudson’s reported heavy involvement in the North Carolina program, including media strategy.

Dokoupil first brought up Hudson about six minutes into the nearly eight-minute feature, so it’s not like it was the focus of the story. However, it was interesting to hear Dokoupil, in a voiceover, say, “Jordon was a constant presence during our interview.”

Dokoupil asked Belichick what it was like to have people constantly talking about his relationship, and he then followed up with what seemed like a fairly innocent, yet interesting question.

“How did you guys meet?” Dokoupil asked.

From off camera, Hudson said, “We’re not talking about this.”

Dokoupil said, “No?”

Hudson said, “No.”

Stunningly, Belichick just sat there, saying nothing.

Dokoupil said in a voiceover, “It’s a topic neither one of them is comfortable commenting on.”

It somehow then got even weirder.

Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner wrote, “It’s about as contentious as the interview got, but provided a really telling look into the dynamic between Belichick and Hudson. The latter is clearly intimately involved in Belichick’s portrayal in the media, enough where she feels comfortable interrupting an interview to avoid what could potentially be an embarrassing line of questioning for the former New England Patriots coach.”

Lerner added, “For what it’s worth, the previous party line about how the couple met was that Belichick sat next to her on a plane.”

For what it’s worth, even Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy tweeted, “My Sunday morning routine is always coffee and CBS Sunday Morning. It’s a feel good show. The opposite of controversial. So imagine my surprise this morning when they had the most awkward Bill Belichick interview I’ve ever seen. Like I was squirming in my seat.”

Falling in the draft

The most interesting thing about the NFL Draft, which was held from Thursday through Saturday on ESPN/ABC and the NFL Network, wasn’t who was taken, but who went so long without being taken. University of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, son of Colorado coach and Hall of Fame player Deion Sanders, was projected to be a first-round draft pick. But, for reasons that still aren’t fully clear, Sanders' draft stock plummeted and he wasn’t picked until the Cleveland Browns took him in the fifth round — 144th overall.

The mystery surrounding Sanders was constantly talked about by ESPN, both in its actual draft broadcast and its other programming, such as “SportsCenter.” That’s not a criticism. It was the story of the draft, and ESPN’s focus was warranted.

But there’s more to this story. ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper, like most draft prognosticators, had Sanders going high in the draft. In fact, Kiper had him going fifth overall. And as time passed without Sanders being picked, Kiper grew more and more annoyed. At one point on Saturday, Kiper said on air, “The NFL has been clueless for 50 years when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks. Clueless. They have no idea what they’re doing. … There’s proof of that.”

It was all part of a tense exchange between Kiper and ESPN host Rece Davis and analyst Louis Riddick.

In a roundtable piece for The Athletic, sports media columnist Richard Deitsch said, “In Kiper’s case, it was the nexus of being invested in his analysis running into the reality of what was actually happening. The reality was that NFL Draft evaluators saw Sanders in a very different way than ESPN’s lead analyst did.”

In the same piece, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand said, “The draft is a TV show, and Kiper was the star. With ESPN, ABC, NFL Network, (Pat) McAfee and a million outlets covering the draft, the two biggest topics at its conclusion were — Sanders dropping and Kiper going nuts about it. For ESPN, it is ‘Mission Accomplished.’”

Marchand later added, “For people on TV, it is an attention business. Kiper was the star of the weekend. Maybe he will even end up being correct on Sanders. But, honestly, for his role, he already got an ‘A,’ because he was the biggest character on the show.”

Correction

In Friday’s newsletter, I had an item about President Donald Trump’s seeming obsession with former President Joe Biden. (Since being inaugurated on Jan. 20, Trump has spoken about Biden, his family or the Biden administration nearly 600 times in either public remarks or on social media.) In my item, I goofed when I said Trump continues to talk about Biden constantly, even though he defeated Biden in last November’s election. Obviously, he did not defeat Biden. Trump defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.

Media tidbits

  • ABC News’ Terry Moran will interview President Donald Trump about his first 100 days in office. The interview will air Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern.
  • On Sunday evening, CBS’s “60 Minutes” addressed the departure of executive producer Bill Owens, who resigned in protest last week. Correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers, “Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way, but our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” Pelley added, “No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead ‘60 Minutes’ all along.”
  • I’ll be recording a new episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast” today with a superb guest you’ll want to hear from. That episode will be released a week from today. Meanwhile, be sure to check out the most recent episode when my guest was The New York Times’ Adam Entous. We discussed his yearlong investigation of the U.S’s real involvement in the war in Ukraine.
  • Katie Sanders, editor-in-chief of PolitiFact at the Poynter Institute, with “Pope Francis called for truth. The internet answered with deepfakes.”
  • Politico’s Adam Wren with a lengthy profile of the White House press secretary: “The Political Education of Karoline Leavitt.”

Hot type

  • From NBC News: “​​Richard Engel shares rare access inside Iran amid cultural evolution.”
  • The New York Times’ Lisa Miller with “When a Child’s Life Becomes the Family Business.”

More resources for journalists

  • Craft your reporting into a captivating book. Apply by April 25.
  • Perfect your editing with the Poynter ACES Advanced Certificate. Enroll now.  
  • Integrate principled AI guidelines into your newsroom operations. Start here.
  • Update your immigration policy expertise with Poynter's Beat Academy. Enroll now.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

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