The National Association of Black Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists have joined more than 250 former broadcast journalists and media groups in urging the White House Correspondents’ Association to make a statement about President Trump's relentless attacks on the media when it hosts him April 25 at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.

"The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it," the group wrote in a letter. "President Trump's systematic, sustained and unprecedented attacks on the free press … render his presence at such an event a profound contradiction of its purpose."

"Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner will be the first Trump has attended as the sitting president. He posted on social media that he has boycotted the event every other year he was in office because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me,' " UPI reported.

Errin Haines, president of NABJ, messaged Journal-isms, (pictured) stated, "We signed on to this letter because it's important for us to be in solidarity with our colleagues, particularly on issues of press freedom. For us to say with clarity and conviction and with one voice that press freedom is non-negotiable feels important in this moment for our profession and our democracy. The attacks on journalists are not abstract for us; our members and the Black community have been targeted. So this is really an opportunity to think about what it means to defend the First Amendment in a way that protects those who make it possible for all of us to be informed. That includes the same people who are underrepresented and more vulnerable in our profession."

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Indigenous Journalists Association did not sign the letter, whose signatories include Dan Rather, Ann Curry and Sam Donaldson. Organizer Ian Cameron messaged Journal-isms, "We emailed all of the associations you mention but only got a response from the NABJ. The others did not decline to sign. We have not heard back. It may very well be that we did not have the best email contacts, although we tried! " Cameron is a former ABC News executive producer who organized the letter with another former ABC colleague, Lisa Stark.

NAHJ said it was considering a response; AAJA and IJA did not respond to inquiries from Journal-isms.

The National Press Photographers Association, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Coalition for Women in Journalism and the Radio Television Digital News Association did sign the letter.

Included in the long list of the Trump administration's offenses against the press were:

In 2026, federal agents arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort while they were covering a news event, with two separate federal judges refusing to sign arrest warrants for lack of evidence of any crime, before the Justice Department obtained a grand jury indictment — a prosecution that press freedom advocates characterized as an assault on the First Amendment right to cover matters of public interest." Lemon and Fort are Black journalists.

The Trump Administration acted against two-foreign born journalists. Mario Guevara, an Emmy Award-winning Spanish-language journalist originally from El Salvador, had lived in the United States for nearly two decades. He was deported by ICE after he was arrested while covering a No Kings rally. Estefany Rodriguez Florez, a Colombian-born journalist who was seeking asylum, was arrested by ICE a day after reporting on ICE raids in Nashville. She was held for two weeks before being released on bail.

Individual signers included Lynne Adrine, A'Lelia Bundles, Barbara Chen, Ann Curry, Alex Garcia, Vince Gonzales, Greg Hernandez, Jeannie Kung, Luz Montez, George Strait, Stephanie Sy, Daniel Woo, Carter Yang and Jaime Zamora.

Michael Grynbaum reported for The New York Times, "Weijia Jiang, a CBS News correspondent who is the current president of the Correspondents' Association, stated that the dinner 'reinforces the importance of the First Amendment in our democracy.' She added, 'Our choice to gather as journalists, newsmakers and the president in the same room is a reminder of what a free press means to this country and why it must endure.'

Typically, the dinner involves speeches by Washington journalists that frequently invoke the First Amendment, and the presentation of awards for notable White House coverage.

One of this year's prizes will be presented to The [Wall Street] Journal for its scoop about a lewd birthday card that Mr. Trump appeared to write to the now-disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

Mr. Trump denied the existence of the letter (which The Journal later published) and sued the newspaper, claiming the article was libelous; a judge dismissed the case last week. During the years that Mr. Trump boycotted the dinner, many senior administration officials skipped the festivities, too.

Whitney Snyder, editor-in-chief of Huff Post, told email subscribers that her publication will not be present. "At HuffPost, we have no problem being in the same room with Trump and asking him direct questions.

Our White House correspondent, S.V. Date, does this all the time-- and is scorned and insulted by the White House for his troubles," said Snyder. "The problem is welcoming Trump at an event dedicated to press freedom. Trump's entire presidency is, of course, an affront to a free press."

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