Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has sent frustration coursing anew through the diplomatic press corps this week by handpicking a single digital news reporter to travel with him to Asia after refusing to allow anyone from major news outlets that regularly cover the State Department a seat on his airplane.
Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times and others, have expressed behind-the-scenes outrage over the development. And on Tuesday night, the State Department Correspondents Association — of which The Washington Times is a member — issued a statement saying it was “disappointed.”
“After saying it was unable to accommodate press on the Secretary’s plane to Asia due to space and budget constraints, the State Department offered a unilateral seat to one reporter,” said the association, which is headed at the moment by journalists from the AP and CNN.
“Several of our members have traveled commercially to meet Secretary Tillerson on the ground in Asia,” the statement said. “We expect that the diplomatic press corps will be afforded access to Secretary Tillerson equal to that given to the reporter on the plane.”
The association was responding to the revelation Tuesday that Mr. Tillerson had chosen to be accompanied by a White House correspondent from the Independent Journal Review (IJR), a digital news outlet founded in 2012 by former Republican political operatives, according to Reuters.
The IJR had said in its own statement that the State Department had moved last week to offer one of the outlet’s reporters, Erin McPike, a place aboard Mr. Tillerson’s aircraft for the trip to Asia, where the secretary of state began his diplomatic visit in Japan Wednesday.
“We don’t take this opportunity lightly and recognize the controversy surrounding press access for the trip,” IJR founder and chief executive Alex Skatell said in the statement, adding that Ms. McPike had previously been “persistent in requesting an interview with Secretary Tillerson.”
Mr. Skatell said a State Department official had explained that Mr. Tillerson’s delegation “would be flying on a smaller plane than normal and that press access would be limited.”
The situation follows weeks of friction between Mr. Tillerson’s office and journalists from other news outlets that more regularly cover the department, including the major news wires that report hourly on the secretary’s official statements, meetings and movements.
Reuters maintained that Mr. Tillerson’s decision not to take reporters from any of those news outlets with him to Asia had broken with decades of precedent stretching back to Henry Kissinger.
Recent weeks saw frustration mount among members of the diplomatic press corps generally over what had been a more than six-week halt in daily press briefings by the State Department.
The briefings resumed last week, although they have so far not been held in with the same daily regularity as what occurred under previous secretaries of state.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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