In an obvious move to limit criticism of the President, the White House has banned television cameras and even live audio recordings of some of its news conferences. Many news conferences have been given in June, but only four have been televised. The administration does not explain exactly why some briefings are permitted to be aired and others not.
CNN has responded cleverly to this by sending a courtroom sketch artist to illustrate the briefings. It is then making these sketches available to all other media outlets. The artist is Bill Hennessy, who usually covers Supreme Court cases for CNN.
TV cameras have always been welcomed at White House news briefings, but they are banned from courtrooms around the world. There they are thought to corrupt the gravity and neutrality of the setting; they tend to make spectacles out of proceedings. They might also intimidate witnesses. Paradoxically, the United States is probably the most permissive country in the world in this regard, as the O.J. Simpson circus demonstrated. It has usually been right-wing libertarians who have pushed for cameras in courtrooms, arguing that democratic procedures must be totally open to the public. (This was before they thought of the media as corrupt.)
When the libertarians have not had their way, sketch artists have been permitted in the most sober chamber in the land. So the administration is unlikely to try to ban them from news briefings.
The use of paper instead of cameras is not likely to help the administration's secretive goals or even its image. What is more objective, really, the liberal media's cameras or their pencils? Are the Trumpians not actually opening themselves up to even more negative portrayals by allowing a little more human interpretation into the news feed?
U.S. conservatives have been the first to breathe fire at the CNN art initiative. "Look for a halo over [CNN White House correspondent] Jim Acosta's head and horns over Spicer's," one Republican tweeted.
The first of Hennessy's drawings released by CNN are sober indeed, without any overt caricature. Deft and elegant line drawings with restrained splashes of watercolour, they do not exaggerate any element. If anything, they are extremely flattering to press secretary Sean Spicer. He appears here quite a bit thinner and more elegant – more patrician – than he does on camera.
There is a hint of the New Yorker cartoon about these angular drawings. A room full of thin people in suits, an obviously powerful man holding his arms wide and looking philosophical: One looks immediately for the funny caption. It's as if the medium itself is inherently satirical.
When painters become reporters, delightful and unpredictable twists on the news occur.
Before portable photography, visual artists were used as professional journalists and state propagandists both, especially in wartime. Most of history's great war artists were employed by governments to document their troops' glorious exploits, and almost all of them added a subtle-or-not critical cast to their paintings. Images of mud-bedraggled, bloodied and exhausted soldiers are perhaps not the most useful pro-war propaganda, but they tend to be what war artists paint.
Take a look at the work of Canadian Second World War artist Molly Lamb Bobak, the first female artist sent overseas by this country: her portrait Private Roy is of a tired and resigned-looking woman in uniform with her arms folded. The artist was sent to document war just as photographers were, and yet this portrait is unmistakably expressionist, the subject's dejection and defiance equally exaggerated by bold strokes. This is far more than a document; it is a statement, an essay even.
The sketch artist has far more subtle ways to comment on proceedings than the network video camera operator has, and is probably trained in iconoclastic ways. So this move by Trump's surrogates is yet another foot-shooting. Instead of limiting media commentary on the press secretary's non-answers, they are going to turn it all further in the direction of wry commentary. It may even exacerbate the perception of mainstream media as biased.
Let's push this development further: I propose a New-Yorker style caption contest for the most recent Bill Hennessy press-conference sketches. What is the lean man in the suit saying as he stretches his arms wide? Is he proposing a further ban on press coverage of a democratic government? Or is he just appealing for a larger parking space for his ZiL?
Let me know at rsmith@globeandmail.com.