ABC News Launching 'Briefing Room'

With the daily White House briefings making news not only for their substance but for their occasional absence or approach—audio only, different folks at the rostrum—ABC News is putting a new online spotlight on the proceedings.

It is launching The Briefing Room, a digital offering on the news and announcements out of White House press briefings, including play-by-play and context. The show will stream live on ABCNews.com, and ABC News' YouTube and Facebook pages.

Sean Spicer will be back at the podium Monday, the White House said, but the briefing will be off-camera, an increasingly frequent break with the Obama Administration's tradition of a daily, on-camera, briefing.

Contributors will include chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega, congressional correspondent Mary Bruce and political director Rick Klein.

At about the same time that ABC News was announcing the new show, President Donald Trump was launching the latest in his barrage of tweeted attacks against the news media.

With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017

(Photo via Gage Skidmores Flickr. Image taken on June 20, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 9x16 aspect ratio.)

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.