How News Outlets Are Preparing for Karoline Leavitt’s White House Press Briefings

With Karoline Leavitt joining President-elect Donald Trump‘s administration as White House press secretary, press briefings might look slightly different in 2025. At 27, Leavitt will be the youngest person to serve in that role and she has signaled that she will approach the entire operation differently.

During an interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Leavitt said that she was “incredibly honored” that Trump chose her to represent him “behind the White House podium.” She also noted that she would defer to him about whether daily press briefings would continue. “Ultimately, he is the decision maker,” she told the Fox News host. 

Should the daily briefings continue, Leavitt hopes there will be “decorum” in the briefing room. However, she also said that she is ready to deal with the “hostile media,” which she has accused of pushing “lies and hoaxes” about Trump. 

Last night on Hannity, incoming White House Press Secretary @KarolineLeavitt gave her first interview since President-elect Trump announced his intention to appoint her. pic.twitter.com/PqTQvnpuXt

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 20, 2024

The name and faces of the journalists present for those briefings might also be different. Leavitt alluded to the presence of  “different voices” potentially joining the legacy media outlets, a reference to the podcasters and social media influencers that Trump sought out during the campaign. 

TVNewser reached out to various broadcast and cable news outlets seeking their thoughts on how they are preparing to work with Leavitt. We asked executives to answer the following question: There is already an understanding of how the first Trump administration approached White House press briefings. Using that experience, how is your network preparing to handle the White House press briefings under Karoline Leavitt.

We received responses from Fox News, NewsNation, Scripps News, and Newsmax. Notably, these respondents are either conservative-leaning outlets (Fox News and Newsmax) or smaller networks (NewsNation and Scripps News).

Mainstream outlets like ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, BBC News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, Telemundo, Univision, and PBS News either didn’t respond or declined to comment, suggesting that they are still figuring out the road ahead.

Bryan Boughton, Fox News Washington bureau chief

Regular press briefings and transparent dialogue with the media are essential to a healthy democracy. Our team’s approach will be the same for this administration as it has with all others, and we will be participating in an open dialogue with the upcoming administration.

Bill Sammon, NewsNation svp of Washington, D.C., editorial content for The Hill and NewsNation

The short answer is that The Hill and NewsNation will cover Karoline Leavitt the same way we’ve covered every other White House press secretary. The longer answer is that we’re, of course, mindful that this particular president tends to closely monitor White House press briefings. So, it will be interesting to see how President Trump reacts to exchanges between grizzled reporters who’ve covered multiple administrations and the youngest White House press secretary in history.

Steve Turnham, Scripps News Washington, D.C. bureau chief and managing editor:

Scripps News intends to cover the Trump administration briefings the same way we’re covering Biden’s, taking them live on the merits of the news of the day—which likely means often considering the policy changes that are anticipated—allowing the public to experience the important back-and-forth between the government and the press as directly as possible.

And, as we do with Biden, we will strive to bring clarity and context to what’s being discussed and inform our viewers if and when the administration misrepresents the facts as we understand them to be. We make no prior assumptions about how the Trump White House intends to conduct the briefings and so have no plan to do anything other than what we’ve always done, which is to take our role extremely seriously and hold ourselves to the highest professional standards.

Through Scripps News’ “Truth be Told” series, we have a team of reporters who specialize in quickly exposing falsehoods, whether they come from the White House or the president-elect’s political opponents, and expect those teams to be very busy.

James Rosen, Newsmax chief White House correspondent

The same way we would prepare for press briefings by any official under any administration: By knowing the relevant subject matters and emerging storylines, posing questions respectfully, and never losing sight of who our audience is. Hint: It’s not the other reporters in the briefing room.