Why I won't see Obama tonight

The biggest shindig of the year will be held in Washington tonight – the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

It has been characterized as "the Oscars for nerds."

But this is not just a social event. It's not just a place where people go to be seen. It's also a news event – one where the president speaks.

No one from WND will be attending this year – not me, not Les Kinsolving, a White House correspondent since the Nixon administration, none of our reporters, none of our guests.

Why?

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Because the White House Correspondents Association, a group to which we belong as members, decided to shaft us for its own reasons.

That means WND won't be permitted to cover the event like other news organizations, even though we pay our dues like everyone else and had pre-paid for tables at the dinner before anyone else, even though we're the oldest of the Internet news organizations and even though we have never before been denied a table at the dinner.

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I know it may seem like sour grapes to write another column on this subject. But the matter is actually of much more import than my hurt feelings. Frankly, I don't even like going to these events. They bore me to tears. But, it's my job to cover them. So, try to imagine you belong to a quasi-government association established to bring order to coverage of the White House and that organizations prevents you from doing your job.

Do you see how dangerous that is?

Can you understand how developments like this move us as a nation in the direction of having "official news," state-controlled news, government-approved news and away from the ideals of a free press?

WND has been doing what it does as an independent Internet news agency for 13 years come this Tuesday. Les Kinsolving, our White House correspondent, is third in seniority among all of his colleagues. Not only that, but I have 25 years of news experience, running daily newspapers and teaching journalism at major universities before launching WND. Kinsolving has even more years of news experience, with a track record of breaking some of the biggest stories of the last 50 years. Despite that longevity and that history, we're being snubbed.

Do you know why?

Can you guess?

It's simply because we take seriously the watchdog role of the press. We don't climb into bed with politicians. We don't accept at face value what government bureaucrats hand out in press releases. We don't just believe what officials say; we insist on evidence, documentation, proof.

That represents a threat to our lazy, shiftless, biased colleagues like you wouldn't believe.

This isn't the first time they have tried to exclude and insult WND and its team. Years ago, we had to endure the same kind of exclusion from the Senate Press Gallery, another quasi-government institution run by so-called journalists who set themselves up as media cops to keep out the riff-raff like us.

The only way we were permitted equal access to cover the Capitol of the United States was to threaten to sue everyone involved. That had the intended effect, and we have been credentialed ever since. Likewise, that is our course of action toward tonight's big shindig in Washington. Denied tables by our colleagues, we have filed a $10 million lawsuit.

Obviously it did not get us in the door tonight.

Les Kinsolving, the subject of a major new biography about his life in journalism, called "Gadfly," will undoubtedly be sitting at home tonight. I will be, too. So will our guests and staff members, some of whom have never had the opportunity to attend the annual event.

Les Kinsolving is at the point in his life and career where you might expect his colleagues to be honoring him – toasting him, presenting him with awards, celebrating him. Instead, because Les marches to the beat of his own drummer, they are marginalizing him, ridiculing him, demeaning him.

I'm not asking you for your sympathy.

I'm asking you for your awareness.

America is in a dangerous place today. It is there partly because the news media are profoundly failing to do their jobs – to expose corruption, fraud, waste and abuse in high places. In fact, the news media, for the most part, are part of the problem, not part of the solution, as the Founding Fathers had hoped.

Think about all this as you watch the coverage of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner tonight and tomorrow.