Brian Karem shares personal experience, professional advice in Young Members’ “Piano Talk”

Brian Karem doesn’t care if anyone in the administration likes him. He’s not afraid to shout a snarky remark at the president, if that’s what it takes to keep him from walking away from an important question. And he will never invite a source to a barbeque.

The award-winning journalist shared personal anecdotes and professional advice in a candid, occasionally irreverent and frequently profound question and answer session with Young Members at the National Press Club on Sept. 11.

Karem, the White House correspondent for Playboy magazine, recalled his early days as a journalist, meeting Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas in the White House press room. Both would become influences in his life.

Thomas taught Karem the importance of asking the question. “It doesn’t matter if your question gets answered. It only matters that you ask it because once it’s asked, it can’t be denied that the issue has been brought up, and that facilitates follow-up,” she told him.

Donaldson taught him how to be heard over the drone of a helicopter. “You don’t have to have a microphone on me on the south lawn,” Karem exclaimed.

As a young reporter, Karem placed a quote by H.L. Mencken above his desk about the perils of getting too close to sources: “They come in as newspaper men, trained to get the news and eager to get it; they end as tin-horn statesmen, full of dark secrets and unable to write the truth if they tried.”

To this day it is one of Karem’s key tenets. While he will maintain cordial relations with a source, “anyone that’s a source of mine will never be invited to my house for a barbecue,” Karem assured.

He explained that maintaining distance avoids both the appearance, and the reality, of a conflict of interest. “Your allegiance should be to finding out facts, and not have that allegiance comingled with a friendship where you might want to protect a friend,” Karem noted.

He also warned of valuing access to sources over the integrity of a story. “Your job is to find out what’s really going on and you can’t do that by kissing a--,” Karem said. “You’re not gonna get s--- from any administration that they don’t want you to get. They’re playing you. So when you pretend to be their friend, they gotcha,” he added.

Karem, who has made headlines by relentlessly pressing Sarah Sanders in White House briefings, believes nobody in the administration likes him - and he’s fine with that. “I don’t give a s--- what they think about me. I don’t care. I’m there to cover what they’re doin’,” he declared.

Karem underscored the importance of intrepid persistence, particularly when covering a virtually inaccessible president. “You have to yell. If they get upset that I scream at ‘em, I don’t care. Bottom line is, the questions have to be asked. He has to be held accountable.”

A young journalist asked how reporters can bolster the media’s credibility midst relentless assault by this administration. “Check your facts, vet your facts, do your job,” Karem said. He added that reporters should question everything, “including the conventional and the prevailing wisdom because it may not be accurate – that’s the only way to keep people informed.”

Karem also urged young journalists not to become the story. “They want to make it about us – they call us enemies of the people – so you have to be selective in how you push back and you have to be sure it’s not about you,” he said.

He advised that “[a]t the end of the day before you answer to your readers, before you answer to your editor, you’ve gotta look yourself in the mirror and answer to your own conscience. And if you’re clear with that, you’ll be fine.”