Take away all the glorified rhetoric about professionalism and training and the bottom line to the opposition of the gallery is explained by fear of competition sparked by new technology. And guess what, this is not a new development.
John Wonderlich, a colleague from the Open House Project, points to this passage of a book by Donald Ritchie, Reporting from Washington, concerning the gallery from the beginning of the New Deal:
“What most shook the press corps from complacency was the periodic intrusion of new technology. From the telegraph to radio, television, and digital electronics, technological innovations not only speeded delivery of the news but stimulated competition within the media.
“Each invention introduced a new group of reporters who felt less bound by their predecessors’ rules and traditions. Over time, the outsiders invariably forced the veteran insiders to adjust to new practices. But initially reporters for each new media met stiff resistance from the press corps’s establishment.
“Since 1880, the U.S. government has ceded the authority to determine who qualifies for a press pass to cover the Capitol, the White House, and the federal agencies to members of the press corps themselves. Reporters elect committees of correspondents who grant formal accreditation, thereby defining, and restricting, their own trade.
“The newspapermen who ran the original press gallery in the U.S. Congress set rules that denied press passes to magazine writers and radio broadcasters. The excluded correspondents petitioned Congress and received their own separate galleries, from which they in turn excluded newcomers who failed to meet their rules.
“As a result, the U.S. Congress, alone among national legislatures, divides its press galleries according to media technologies. Both the print and broadcast galleries became perplexed over how to classify Internet reporters, fearing that setting too loose a definition would allow anyone with a web site to apply for a press pass.
“In addition to denying access to new technologies, for decades the fraternal rules of the press galleries also excluded women and minorities, and limited access for foreign correspondents and American reporters who worked for government agencies. Hard-fought battles eventually opened the press galleries to greater diversity, by race, gender, and technology, and repeatedly redefined Washington reporting.”
For more information on the Open House Project, go here. This is a trans-partisan effort of folks seeking to encourage Congress to make much greater use of the Internet and related technologies to open official processes to the public.
Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader John Boehner have endorsed the Open House Project and pledged to support adoption of its recommendations wherever possible and feasible.
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