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The White House Correspondents' Association's (WHCA) leader says she regrets comedian and The Daily Show contributor Michelle Wolf's routine at the organisation's dinner this year may end up defining an evening designed to rally around journalism.
Wolf's jokes about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as she sat nearby, seemed to spark the most outrage, offending present and past members of US President Donald Trump's administration — including one who walked out in protest.
"I think she's very resourceful, like she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye," Wolf said about Ms Huckabee Sanders.
"Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies."
In a statement, WHCA president Margaret Talev said she had "heard from members expressing dismay with the entertainer's monologue and concerns about how it reflects on our mission".
She said the journalism awards dinner "was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honouring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people".
"Unfortunately, the entertainer's monologue was not in the spirit of that mission," Ms Talev said.
Ms Talev said she and the organisation's incoming president would take comments from members on their views "on the format of the dinner going forward".
Talev, Bloomberg News' senior White House correspondent, said she did not want a dinner celebrating the constitutional right to free speech to be overshadowed by the ensuing uproar over Wolf's jokes.
"My only regret is that to some extent those 15 minutes are now defining four hours of what was a really wonderful unifying night and I don't want the cause of unity to be undercut," Talev told CNN.
She said she spoke to Sanders after Wolf's routine.
"I told her that I knew that this was a big decision whether or not to attend the dinner, whether to sit at the head table and that I really appreciated her being there," she said.
By tradition, the WHCA does not review the comedian's monologue before it is delivered, Talev said.
"We don't censor it. We don't even see it," she said.
Mr Trump also joined the criticism of Wolf.
"Everyone is talking about the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner was a very big, boring bust … the so-called comedian really 'bombed'," he posted on Twitter, later saying the events was "DEAD as we know it".
Ms Huckabee Sanders sat in Mr Trump's place at the event, with the President, who regularly lobs sharp attacks at the news media, skipping the event for the second consecutive year. He attended a rally in Washington, Michigan, instead.
Photo:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat in Donald Trump's place at the event. (Reuters: Aaron P Bernstein)
Sean Spicer, who preceded Sanders at the White House lectern, tweeted after the dinner that the night "was a disgrace".
American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted he and his wife Mercedes Schlapp, director of strategic communications at the White House, walked out of the dinner.
"Enough of elites mocking all of us," he said.
Fox News's chief national correspondent and former WHCA president Ed Henry, called on the WHCA and Wolf to apologise to Ms Huckabee Sanders.
MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski — who has been the subject of personal attacks by Mr Trump — also called on the association to apologise.
ABC/AP
Topics: donald-trump, world-politics, government-and-politics, information-and-communication, arts-and-entertainment, united-states
First posted