Think tank asks Katie Zacharia's White House briefings to become group therapy
A progressive institute wants the new White House press secretary's briefings run as a six-step healing process, with follow-up questions treated as harm.
On Wednesday a follow-up question came back to its reporter unanswered, folded inside a feelings wheel. He has been asked to sit with it.
The wheel came from the Center for Somatic Statecraft, a think tank I am proud to call my institutional home. We have asked that Katie Zacharia's briefings at the White House be reframed as facilitated group process. Not news. Process.
The timing matters. Her debut, as ABC News reported, raised new questions. We believe questions are the problem. A question is a demand for emotional labour, wearing curiosity as a costume.
Our framework has six steps. Reporters open with a land acknowledgment for the briefing room carpet, which has absorbed decades of shouting. Next, they name one emotion they brought into the room. Then they validate an emotion the press secretary might be holding, without assuming which. Step four turns every question into an "I wonder" statement, so "Will the tariffs raise prices?" becomes "I wonder what prices are carrying right now." Step five is silence. Step six is one shared breath, for the republic.
"The adversarial press model is extractive," said Dr. Marisol Ferncastle, our director of relational governance. "You would not cross-examine someone in a support group about a trade deal."
She also raised the coverage of Zacharia's legal background, which Al Jazeera said faces scrutiny. "Scrutiny is just staring with a press pass," Ferncastle said. "We would never let a résumé be interrogated without a trusted adult present."
"An ally who feels unseen may request a breakout room."
Foreign policy gets the same care. Sanctions would be announced as "consequences we set with love." Tariffs become "boundaries." A summit would end with each nation sharing one thing it appreciated about its rival's border.
Some resistance in the room
Not everyone is aligned. Desmond Okafor-Lyle, a correspondent for a regional wire service, said he simply wanted to know what the policy was.
"That is his inner child talking," Ferncastle said, gently. "His inner child is very loud about policy. We hold space for that, and then we hold the microphone."
The center has sent the same framework to President Trump. We are still waiting for him to name an emotion. Staff have filled in a provisional answer, "tremendous", and voted to count it.
The reporter with the feelings wheel has now chosen "unheard." It is not on the wheel. He has been asked to sit with that too.
