Adventures in Journalism at CPAC

This is the third in a series of articles in which senior staff of The Dartmouth Review comment on their visit to CPAC in Orlando as members of the media.

This past February, senior staff of The Dartmouth Review attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC, at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando. The trip, however short, was a welcome respite from the cold and bitter Winter Term that we were enduring in Hanover. As generations of Dartmouth students have come to learn, there seems to emerge a termly “plague” or “flu” among the student body, and this Winter Term was no exception, attesting as it did to the pointlessness of the College’s compulsory masking policies. While we Reviewers were indeed quite sick when we departed Hanover, our Orlando excursion proved an apt anecdote to our illnesses. To this end, the Florida sun, clean, crisp air, and lack of masking all aided in our recovery.

As for the event itself, CPAC was held from Thursday, February 24 through Sunday, February 27. In this short piece, I will attempt to provide several reflections on our experience over the course of those four days. Ours was a singular experience, as we did not go to CPAC as mere attendees. Rather, some weeks in advance we had obtained media passes, which relieved us of the necessity that we pay several hundreds of dollars to gain admittance. The media passes also allowed us to cut to the front of the entrance line and to bring bags and laptops with us into the conference. This is to say, we learned quickly that media are afforded certain privileges at right-wing events in spite of the suspicion which organizers and attendees undoubtedly have of them. Still, within the auditorium in which the speakers addressed the crowd, the media filing center was perched in a somewhat obstructed back corner.

I estimate that there were representatives of well over one hundred media outlets present over the course of the four-day conference, although I would note that some of these outlets were at CPAC only briefly. Many unabashedly conservative outlets had permanent interview booths set up (doubtless per an agreement with the organizers) in a long hallway just exterior to the central auditorium. Each of these outlets’ booths had cameramen and journalists present, and hence many outlets were almost constantly in the process of conducting interviews, often with people who had addressed the crowd earlier that same day. At the front of this effective line of media booths was that of Fox News (theirs was also the largest booth), and, as the line went further down the hallway, increasingly minor or perhaps niche news sources seemed to predominate. In total, there were probably some twenty-five outlets with permanent booths. Added to this total, various conservative outlets sent one or two journalists to circulate among the attendees throughout the four-day conference.

On the other hand, left-wing media, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, the more center-left Politico, and center-right The Wall Street Journal did not seem to have reporters covering all four days of the conference—or at least not overtly. The Post and Times, in particular, seemed to appear only for Trump’s speech on Saturday. Another interesting observation that I made about the media at CPAC, and I assume media more broadly, bears mentioning: that there is a definable hierarchy of media. Each morning of the conference, we had to rush to secure seats at long tables in the media filing center, from which we could watch the speeches, take notes, and live-tweet. It was amusing to see journalists from more minor outlets gladly giving up their seats for late-arriving representatives from Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, often merely to strike up conversation and get to know them. While one might accredit this to some sort of esprit de corps among the media, it was rather clear to us that some journalists were simply awestruck by others. We at The Dartmouth Review were certainly not immune from this effect, and we had fun identifying media outlets and spotting particularly well-known journalists. Note, though, that we kept our seats! Numerous representatives of the media, ourselves included (to a minimal extent), even went so far as to interview journalists who, while not speakers, had a measure of celebrity. 

Given that we were in at least some respect representing the Granite State at CPAC, it was a privilege to meet several notable New Hampshire Republican officials. They were so kind as to grant access to additional rooms and events which we would not otherwise have been able to enter. For instance, one official helped us secure the photo with Governor Walker that accompanies this article. We also saw local State Representative Judy Aron receive an award for her strong conservative record in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Furthermore, we recurringly encountered several other personages, from out of state, over the course of the four days of CPAC. Our favorite among these was Robert Dempster, a radio host in the Detroit Metropolitan Area for the conservative Salem Media Network (the fabled domain of Hugh Hewitt). Dubbed “The Positive Patriot,” Mr. Dempster is a sprightly seventy-two, and we found that he exuded a refreshing vibrance and positivity about the fate of our nation, even as he described the combined efforts of the technocracy and leftist media as the “Empire of Lies.”(!) While Dempster is without doubt the quintessential showman, in his conversations with us he also demonstrated a certain conviction and sincerity that one might not expect of a radio host, which my inner cynic found reassuring.

Finally, I would be remiss were I not to briefly comment on the overarching theme of the conference, as was proudly stamped on banners and posters aplenty: “Awake Not Woke.” As this slogan suggests, cultural issues were certainly the conference’s foregrounded frame of reference, and I think this was for good reason. Opposition to the leftist penchant of late for extreme social transformation does indeed seem a unifying shield for Republicans, both those who support and those who oppose Trump and his continuing influence in the party. The Dartmouth Review’s visit to CPAC was time well spent, and I think it provided us insight and formative inspiration in our ongoing journalistic pursuits.