White House Correspondents' Association
organizaton of the press corps to the President of the United States
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.
The WHCA operates independently of the White House. Application for membership is made online and granted by the association on the basis of criteria. Historically, notable issues handled by the WHCA were the credentialing process, access to the president and physical conditions in the White House press briefing rooms. Its most high-profile activity is the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, which is traditionally attended by the president and covered by the news media.
In February 2025, the White House announced that the WHCA would no longer determine which outlets are allowed access to the president.
Association leadership
The leadership of the White House Correspondents' Association for 2025–26 includes:
Officers
President: Weijia Jiang, CBS News
Vice President: Justin Sink, Bloomberg News
Treasurer: Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News
Secretary: Brian Bennett, Time
Board members
Sara Cook, CBS News
Andrew Harnik, Getty Images
Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters
Courtney Subramanian, Bloomberg News
Karen Travers, ABC News
Executive Director
Steven Thomma
Association presidents
White House press room
The White House Correspondents' Association is responsible for assigning the seats and the standing room in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House. Even though the press office issues the passes for each session of press briefing, the correspondents' association decides who sits where. The board of directors assigns news sources to certain positions, which change about each 3–4 years.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2867521. VIAF identifies the subject as 123526770. The Library of Congress control number is no2006114643. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “White House Correspondents' Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.