Jay Carney White House Press Secretary
The White House found itself with another press corps controversy on its hands on Friday, after it emerged that it held a secret briefing about the Benghazi attacks with a select group of White House reporters.
Spokesperson Jay Carney was initially supposed to hold a briefing at 12:30 PM on Friday. However, ABC’s Jon Karl threw a wrench in that plan when he reported that the State Department had been involved in lengthy revisions of CIA talking points about the attacks.
All of a sudden, the press briefing was pushed back to 1:45 PM. Then, Politico reportedthat the White House had held a secret briefing about the Benghazi developments with reporters. The site reported that, while the contents of the briefing were on “deep background,” meaning that they could be used as background information in reporting, the existence of the meeting itself was off the record.
However, not all reporters were invited to the briefing. White House journalists havecomplained many times in the past about their level of access to administration officials.