In what appears to be a push to take even firmer control over the press corps' coverage of the current administration, the White House is now selectively distributing reports submitted by press poolers and apparently cutting the ones it doesn’t like.
Oliver Darcy of Status News first reported Wednesday night that at least two recent dispatches filed by the poolers on duty were not sent out to the news outlets that are subscribed to the White House pool report mailing list.
Earlier this week, Dallas Morning News correspondent Joseph Morton sent out an email about the press being on the move from the White House to President Donald Trump’s speech at a fundraising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee. While the message essentially conveyed that a small group of reporters was traveling to cover the event, it also included the following observation: “A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press were turned away from joining the pool.”
Notably, the refusal to allow AP journalists to travel with the press corps came shortly after a federal judge ruled that the White House must restore access to the wire service. The White House had banned the Associated Press journalists from the daily rotation of pool reporters because of the outlet’s editorial decision not to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order renaming it.
“That specific pool report from Morton, I’ve learned, was never distributed by the White House to news outlets subscribed to its pool report mailing list—a notable omission and a clear break from precedent,” Darcy reported.
Besides the Dallas Morning News report, the White House also withheld a Monday dispatch from RealClearPolitics reporter Philip Wegmann, who noted that a scheduled press conference between the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been canceled.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, which has already had much of its power over the press corps stripped away by the administration, has already raised the alarm over the White House’s censorship of its journalists’ reports.
“Traditionally, pool reporters file dispatches about the president’s movements and remarks that are then distributed by the White House to the wider media ecosystem,” Darcy noted. “Now, it appears the White House is withholding reports it doesn’t like—choosing not to distribute pool reports that contain information it finds inconvenient or unflattering.”
Though the correspondents’ association also manages its own email list for members of the association to counter government control of the alerts and to ensure its reporters receive the real-time dispatches, journalists who aren’t members – specifically from smaller independent outlets – have to rely on the White House’s official mailing list
“This is a perfect example of why the White House Correspondents’ Association for years has provided independent delivery of pool reports,” association president Eugene Daniels said in a statement. “It’s critical that journalists who cover the presidency—and the Americans who rely on their coverage to stay informed—get unfiltered information free from government control.”
The White House, meanwhile, denied that it is censoring the pool reports. “This is a false narrative – the White House does not intentionally withhold any pool reports. President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Independent.
It comes as the administration has already seized power from the association over which reporters and outlets receive press pool assignments and is now looking to control where journalists sit in the White House briefing room.
