The White House is adding four ‘Skype Seats’ to its press briefings | Hacker News Reader

The White House is adding four ‘Skype Seats’ to its press briefings

techcrunch.com

42 pointspearlsteinj45 comments

The White House's press room is actually a rather small room, and there are only 49 chairs in the room. You can see some of the pictures at Wikipedia and from links thereof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Brady_Press_Briefing_...).

One thing that is worth pointing out is that the chairs are all assigned seating to specific news organizations. This assignment is NOT done by the White House but the White House Correspondents' Association. So the Trump administration can't decide to, say, replace the Christian Science Monitor's or Al Jazeera's seat with Breitbart News.

The linked article doesn't discuss who is going to be allocating these virtual seats--and I rather suspect that it's going to be decided by the White House and not the White House Correspondents' Association. It's disappointing that the article doesn't mention this, since knowing the answer to this question is what really sets the purpose of the move. If it is to be given to the White House Correspondents' Association, then it is likely an attempt to give voice to a wider range of media... but if it's White House-controlled, then it's more likely an attempt to guide press briefings to only considering questions from more compliant news organizations.

Edit: There are 49 seats, not the 42 that I originally stated.

Why use the "Skype" branding? Why not call them simply "video feed seats"?

The White House Press Briefing, brought to you by Skype and McDonalds!

Every day brings us closer to the Corporate Congress from the Continuum series. ;).

Or the 29th amendment from Incorporated.

Basically, imagine a show that takes place in the dystopian future of Continuum.

Somehow I missed that show. Thanks, adding to my to-watch-while-eating-supper list :).

People know what Skype is. It's almost generic, like referring to tissues as Kleenex.

Does this mean Skype won the video conf battle already?

His statement suggests they lost a trademark war.

Or like calling all of GNU/Linux "bash"

(yes Microsoft, that's you)

So basically, mainstream media is asking us annoying questions so we'll field them from people we like. Bets on how many of these Skype seats go to alt-right platforms and blogs? Bets on how often questions are fielded to these participants vs traditional media?

Ok, so Breitbart has a seat now. Who else?

My first thought was that they were trying to get around those pesky fact checking media and serve "The Message" directly to the masses.

Several Internet-only sites are already members of the White House Press Corps, including hyper-conservative sites like Newsmax and the Daily Caller. Breitbart could have a seat in the briefing room if it wanted, and can certainly afford to do so.

Well Steve Bannon already works for the White House, so Breitbart can have a seat already. I'm guessing less credible "fake-ish news" news sources that paint the administration in a positive light (but don't have press credentials) will have those seats.

Is the White House press briefing not televised/streamed already? Or is this just for the question asking aspect of it?

This gives people who are not from the major newspapers, magazines and TV stations access to ask questions at the briefing. Many of the majors don't even attend most briefings, so this could give more minor outlets much better access at low cost.

This is pretty cool news to be sure. About time we had an administration in line with modern tech reality.

White House reporters aren't in the room because they lack the tech-savvy to be there; the New York Times can throw down against any Y Combinator startup in building technology.

Reporters are in the room because they're trained, professional reporters who have dedicated their careers to reporting on the White House. Diluting their influence is not necessarily a good thing.

This is another opportunity to hide the physicality of the room. The Skype members probably won't have the same viewpoint that reporters in the room will have. Easier to spin noises in the background.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com