
The White House is adding four ‘Skype Seats’ to its press briefings - pearlsteinj
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/23/skype-seats/
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jcranmer
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Brady_Press_Briefing_Room)).

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.

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

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ams6110
People know what Skype is. It's almost generic, like referring to tissues as
Kleenex.

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pacomerh
Does this mean Skype won the video conf battle already?

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droithomme
His statement suggests they _lost_ a trademark war.

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jorblumesea
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?

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

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tptacek
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.

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

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nickff
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.

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

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tptacek
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.

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ionforce
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.

