White House Briefing Room Shakeup: Real Clear Politics, Yahoo News Get Seats

Shakeup In The White House Press Room
FILE - In this March 1, 2013, file photo President Barack Obama speaks to reporters in the White House press briefing room in Washington. In his first term, Obama engaged in 107 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters during events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and similar settings, versus 354 such events with former President George W. Bush. In impromptu Q-and-A's, the questions fly about anything and everything from the national press corps, and these wide-open opportunities to challenge the president on the events of the day have become increasing rare. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - In this March 1, 2013, file photo President Barack Obama speaks to reporters in the White House press briefing room in Washington. In his first term, Obama engaged in 107 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters during events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and similar settings, versus 354 such events with former President George W. Bush. In impromptu Q-and-A's, the questions fly about anything and everything from the national press corps, and these wide-open opportunities to challenge the president on the events of the day have become increasing rare. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

The White House press briefing room will look a tad different now that some additional news organizations were granted seats.

The New York Times' Peter Baker tweeted that Real Clear Politics and Yahoo News were given seats in the briefing room. Publications including MediaNews, Daily Beast, SiriusXM, Sky News, Financial Times and The Guardian would share seats.

Seats within the White House press briefing room have a storied past as placement often determines the importance of the news publication. As such, the country's largest news bureaus often sit front and center. Typically, press secretaries call on journalists' questions in seat order, starting from the front and moving towards the back.

Jay Carney, however, calls on journalists at random, jumping around the briefing room. The press secretary once clashed with then-ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper on this very subject. Carney skipped over Tapper and called on a journalist who sat further back in the room. When Carney came back to Tapper, who sat in the front of the room next to other network correspondents and wire services, the ABC News reporter called the press secretary's decision to take questions in an nontraditional format "annoying."

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