WASHINGTON – An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday ran up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning Biden’s handling of the conflict and Western media coverage of it.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, used the annual White House Correspondents’ Association gala to boost media coverage of his administration and attack political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.
With hundreds of protesters demonstrating against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns about the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the dangers for journalists covering the conflict, war loomed over this year’s event.
“Shame on you!” shouted protesters dressed in traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch bags as guests rushed inside for dinner.
Chants accused American journalists of covering up the war and misrepresenting it. “The Western media sees you and all the horrors you hide,” crowds shouted at one point.
Other protesters were sprawled motionless on the sidewalk, next to models of bulletproof vests with “press” insignias.
Protesters chanted “Free Palestine, free”. They applauded when, at one point, someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a hotel’s top-floor window.
Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread to American college campuses, with students setting up camps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests support Israel’s offensive and complain of anti-Semitism.
Biden’s motorcade on Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding crowds of protesters.
Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people was accompanied by “Saturday Night Live” artist Colin Jost.
Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the public of the important work that journalists do, but highlighting that the dinner takes place at a “complex moment for our nation” and in a decisive election year.
The evening’s remarks were also expected to highlight the many journalists detained and persecuted around the world for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
Authorities, including the Secret Service, instituted additional street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety for participants.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect protesters’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant of any violent or destructive behavior.”
Protest organizers said they wanted to draw attention to the high number of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by the Israeli military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their counterparts in Washington to boycott the dinner entirely.
“The price charged to us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detention, interrogation and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — has been largely silent since the first weeks of the war about the murders of Palestinian journalists. The WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists were killed while covering the war in Gaza. Israel defended its actions, saying it was targeting militants.
“Since the start of the war between Israel and Gaza, journalists have paid the highest price – their lives – to defend our right to the truth. Every time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, a US-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden as he allows the devastation and Israeli hunger.” of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Additionally, the Adalah Justice Project initiated an email campaign targeting 12 media executives from various media outlets – including the Associated Press – who were scheduled to attend the dinner and who previously signed a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to go?” one protester asked guests as they entered.
___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
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