The White House press secretary is a senior White House official whose primary responsibility is to act as spokesperson for the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, especially with regard to the president, senior aides and executives, as well as government policies.
Helen Amelia Thomas was an American reporter and author, and a long serving member of the White House press corps. She covered the White House during the administrations of ten U.S. presidents—from the beginning of the Kennedy administration to the second year of the Obama administration.
William Bret Baier is the host of Special Report with Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel and the chief political correspondent for Fox. He previously worked as the network's Chief White House Correspondent and Pentagon correspondent.
Jacob Paul Tapper is an American journalist, author, and cartoonist. He is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, and hosts the weekday television news show The Lead with Jake Tapper and hosts the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union.
John Hope Franklin was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and continually updated. More than three million copies have been sold. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
On February 11, 2006, then-United States vice president Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a then-78-year-old Texas attorney, with a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun while participating in a quail hunt on a ranch in Riviera, Texas. Both Cheney and Whittington called the incident an accident.
Jonathan H. Alter is a liberal American journalist, best-selling author, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and television producer who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. Alter has written several books about American presidents, most recently His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, published in 2020, the first independent biography of Carter. Alter is a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. In 2021, Alter launched a newsletter called "Old Goats: Ruminating With Friends", where he has conversations with accomplished people who share their wisdom and experience. In 2013 and 2014, Alter served as an executive producer on the Amazon Studios production Alpha House, which starred John Goodman, Mark Consuelos, Clark Johnson, and Matt Malloy. In 2019, he co-produced and co-directed Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists," a documentary about the columnists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, which received the 2020 Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Documentary.
The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the president of the United States. The WHCA was founded on February 25, 1914, by journalists in response to an unfounded rumor that a United States congressional committee would select which journalists could attend press conferences of President Woodrow Wilson.
On April 29, 2006, American comedian Stephen Colbert appeared as the featured entertainer at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, which was held in Washington, D.C., at the Hilton Washington hotel. Colbert's performance, consisting of a 16-minute podium speech and a 7-minute video presentation, was broadcast live across the United States on the cable television networks C-SPAN and MSNBC. Standing a few feet from U.S. President George W. Bush, in front of an audience of celebrities, politicians, and members of the White House Press Corps, Colbert delivered a controversial, searing routine targeting the president and the media. He spoke in the persona of the character he played on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a parody of conservative pundits such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
The Reverend Sir Dr. Stephen T. Mos Def Colbert D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World, or Stephen Colbert, is the fictionalized persona of political satirist Stephen Colbert, as portrayed on the Comedy Central series The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and occasionally on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. Described as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed high-status idiot" and a "self-important right-wing commentator", the character incorporates aspects of the real Colbert's life and interests but is primarily a parody of cable news pundits, particularly former Fox News prime time host Bill O'Reilly.
James Ferguson Carney is a former White House press secretary to President Barack Obama. He served as the 28th press secretary from February 2011 through June 2014. For the first two years of Obama's presidency, Carney was director of communications for Vice President Joe Biden. Prior to his government service, Carney worked for 20 years at Time Magazine, and was the magazine's Washington bureau chief from 2005 to 2008. As a Washington-based reporter, Carney appeared frequently on various political talk shows, including This Week with George Stephanopoulos for ABC News.
Albert Merriman Smith was an American wire service reporter, notably serving as White House correspondent for United Press International and its predecessor, United Press. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 by Lyndon B. Johnson.
On October 16, 2007, satirist Stephen Colbert officially announced that he would run for President of the United States. This came after weeks of being pressured to do so by the public and stating that he would need a sign, which came from Aragorn giving him the sword Anduril. Although the legitimacy of his campaign was questioned, he maintained that he was serious. Colbert had originally planned to run for both the Republican and the Democratic nomination in his home state of South Carolina. After learning that the fee to file for the Republican primary was $35,000, he abandoned plans to run as a Republican. Although he paid the $2,500 fee to be included in the South Carolina Democratic ballot, he was denied a place on the ballot by the South Carolina Democratic Party executive council. On November 5, 2007, Colbert officially dropped his presidential bid.
The Jeremiah Wright controversy gained national attention in the United States, in March 2008 after ABC News investigated the sermons of Jeremiah Wright who was, at that time, the pastor of then U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. Excerpted parts of the sermons were found to pertain to terrorist attacks on the United States and government dishonesty and were subject to intense media scrutiny. Wright is a retired senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and former pastor of Obama.
Barack Obama, who was elected as the 44th President of the United States, has elicited a number of public perceptions regarding his personality and background. As the first African-American President of the United States, his race and culture played a prominent role, both positively and negatively. His relative youth has alternately resulted in his being praised for his freshness and criticized for his inexperience. His temperament and demeanor have been praised for perceived unflappability, but criticized for a perception of lacking emotional attachment.
Abilio James Acosta is an American broadcast journalist, anchor and the chief domestic correspondent for CNN. Previously, Acosta served as the network's chief White House correspondent during the Trump administration, in which he gained national attention for President Donald Trump's clashes with him at press briefings. Acosta also covered the Obama administration as CNN's senior White House correspondent. As Trump was about to leave office, it was announced on January 11, 2021 that Acosta had been appointed Anchor and Chief Domestic Correspondent for CNN.
Before and after the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States in 2008, the idea of a black president has been explored by various writers in novels, movies and television, as well as other media. Numerous actors have portrayed a black president. Such portrayals have occurred in both serious works and comedies.
The 2012 Benghazi attack was a coordinated attack against two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, by members of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia.
April Danielle Ryan is an American reporter, author, and White House Correspondent for The Grio. From January 1997 to November 2020 Ryan served as a White House correspondent and Washington, D.C., bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks. In 2017, she joined CNN as a political analyst. In May 2017, the National Association of Black Journalists named Ryan as the "Journalist of the Year".
