(BUZZFEED) — WASHINGTON — President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with select reporters from some of the nation’s largest print and online outlets Monday, in the White House’s latest effort to placate an increasingly restive press corps.
White House officials regularly meet with reporters for so-called “background briefing sessions,” where the attendees cannot be mentioned by name nor quoted directly, but Monday’s meeting was different. Initially billed as a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the president made a surprise appearance — a very unusual move — and the White House placed the proceedings off the record beforehand. The meeting came amid a series of scandals crashing over the White House that has placed the administration on defense in a way it hasn’t been until now.
Relations between the press and the White House have been especially fraught since last month’s revelation that the Justice Department had covertly collected phone records from Associated Press reporters in pursuit of locating the source of a national security leak. When the Justice Department sought to hold an off-the-record meeting with journalists to discuss its investigation, news outlets pushed back, with The New York Times publicly refusing to attend.
