The Hill Tells WHCA It Will Drop Out Of Future Dinners Unless ‘Major Changes’ Made
It looks like comedian Michelle Wolf’s mean jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sanders are going to remain part of the news cycle for the foreseeable future.
In a letter delivered to the White House Correspondents Association, political news site The Hill declared that they weren’t going to participate in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the future unless the association made big reforms.
“There’s simply no reason for us to participate in something that casts our profession in a poor light,” chairman Jimmy Finkelstein wrote. “Major changes are needed to the annual event.”
Finkelstein cited Wolf’s comedy routine as the main why he was pulling his outlet from the event going forward.
From Jimmy Finkelstein’s silly letter to the WHCA explaining why The Hill will not participate in the dinner in the future pic.twitter.com/J6zbmdC4TT
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) May 1, 2018
Of course, as the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple noted right after the letter was sent out, this was essentially just PR as it is obvious the WHCA is going to make changes to the dinner and the next dinner is a year away.
The Hill has sent a letter to the White House Correspondents' Association declaring it doesn't plan to take part in future dinners, "without major reforms."
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) May 1, 2018
The letter from The Hill is a clever piece of PRcraft. "Major reforms," after all, are coming in light of Saturday's events, so the upshot of this declaration is kinda nil.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) May 1, 2018
Yet the title of the release is "THE HILL DROPS OUT OF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER"
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) May 1, 2018
And consider that the next White House Correspondents' Association Dinner — if it survives this trauma! — is 360-odd days away.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) May 1, 2018
Anyway, good job by The Hill getting a news story out of this while the focus is still on Wolf and the outrage over her jokes.
Hannity knows his audience is never going to read any legitimate news source such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, so he can lie about their articles all day long and nobody who watches his show will be the wiser.