A group of Arab journalists are boycotting this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, reports The Independent.
According to the report, more than two dozen Arab reporters, writers, and multimedia journalists from Gaza and elsewhere have signed an open letter urging their colleagues to boycott the dinner as an “act of solidarity” in response to President Joe Biden’s “complicity in the systematic slaughter and persecution of journalists” and the “starvation” of millions of Arabs in Gaza.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual event typically held on the last Saturday of April in Washington to honor the work of journalists and the media. However, the Arab journalists described the dinner as “an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access,” and argued that for journalists to attend would be to “normalize, sanitize, and whitewash the administration’s role in genocide.”
Traditionally, the President and Vice President attend the dinner, with the President usually delivering a humorous speech poking fun at themselves, their administration, and the press. It began in 1924 under then-President Calvin Coolidge and has been attended by every sitting president since, with a few notable exceptions, including Donald Trump, who did not attend the dinner during his entire presidency.
