The Pavlovic Today’s Editor-in-Chief sat down with the Foreign Press to discuss her life, career, and experience as a White House Correspondent covering the Trump and Biden administration.
In an interview with the Foreign Press’s Tamsin Vidal, The Pavlovic Today’s founder and editor-in-chief Ksenija Pavlovic Mcateer opened up about her career journey, international background and experiences covering the White House.
After growing up under a dictatorship in former Yugoslavia, Mcateer was exposed to the threats against democracy and the power of journalism holding a country’s government accountable. This all came to a head when Trump was elected in 2016, and journalists struggled for access and coverage.
“Four years of the Trump administration as a member of the WH press corps was like trying to do your work in the middle of the hurricane,” Mcateer said during the interview.
As a foreign-born journalist, Mcateer holds a unique perspective of democracy in America, and the ease with which it may slip out of grasp. In 2017, after the inauguration of Donald Trump, she started noticing concerning changes early in Trump’s term, causing her to warn those around her that it may end in violence. Eventually, it did, with the insurrection of the capital on January 6, 2021, an event that shocked the nation but not Mcateer.
In 2017, Mcateer made headlines by deliberately ignoring Trump’s ban on cameras by streaming the briefing on the app Periscope. After all, that form of resistance was often used by the independent press in Serbia who disobeyed press censorship or restriction during the media blackout of the ‘90s.
“I do not have the fear to speak up and speak out,” Mcateer said in the interview. “Perhaps because I have experience of a dictatorship, censorship, and the fight for freedom, which ultimately won through, so whether it’s Trump or Biden, if restrictions are placed on the free press in any shape or form, you will always find me on the front line of defense of the first amendment.”
Read what else Mcateer said about her journey and experiences with the Foreign Press.