The White House decided that rather than restore full access to the Associated Press after a federal judge sided with the news organization, it would just eliminate the position for wire services in the rotating press pool altogether.
A memo sent out by a White House official on Tuesday night lays out the new criteria for the rotation of the press pool — the group of journalists who travel with the president on a daily basis and report on behalf of the entire press corps — specifying that it would no longer include a spot for wire services.
Rather than the longstanding wire position, which would include Bloomberg and Reuters as well as the AP, the new memo states that there will now be a spot for an additional print journalist. It will also continue to include a spot for one “new media” journalist — a position the Trump White House opened up this year — along with four photojournalists and other radio, TV, and streaming services.
While Bloomberg and Reuters will conceivably be included in the pool as part of the “print” spots, it also suggests that the thousands of new outlets that subscribe to wire services will have markedly less access and coverage of the White House on a daily basis. “Wire-based outlets will be eligible for selection as part of the Pool’s daily print-journalist rotation,” the memo noted.
For decades, the White House Correspondents’ Association determined the makeup of the pool rotation based on the press corps that covers the White House. However, in February, press secretary Karoline Leavitt seized that power away from the organization as part of its ongoing transformation of how the media is allowed to cover this administration.
The AP, meanwhile, has been locked in a fight with the White House over its editorial decision not to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” in its style guidelines following the president’s executive order changing the body of water’s name. The decision, which the AP noted was due to it being a global news outlet, prompted the administration to ban AP journalists from pooled events and other White House press gatherings.
This led the wire service to file a federal lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations, resulting in Judge Trevor McFadden siding with the AP last week and calling for the White House to immediately restore access to the outlet and its journalists, noting that “the Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination.”
In his ruling, McFadden said that the White House needed to “put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets, despite the AP’s use of disfavored terminology.” It would appear, though, that the White House decided to just outright change the field rather than give the AP the same treatment as Reuters and Bloomberg — and thus also punish those wire services.
“Outlets will be eligible for participation in the Pool, irrespective of the substantive viewpoint expressed by an outlet,” the White House memo states, seemingly pushing back on the judge’s “viewpoint discrimination” remarks.
“We are deeply disappointed that the administration has chosen to restrict the access of all wire services, whose fast and accurate White House coverage informs billions of people every single day, rather than reinstate The AP to the wire pool,” the AP said in a statement on Tuesday night. “The wire services represent thousands of news organizations across the U.S. and the world over.”
The AP followed that up by filing a motion stating that the White House’s new press pool policy is “a clear violation of the court's injunction order,” urging McFadden to enforce his ruling. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning.
“It is essential to democracy that the public have access to independent, impartial and accurate news about their government,” Reuters said in a statement. “Any steps by the U.S. government to limit access to the President threatens that principle, both for the public and the world’s media.”
“The changes to the press pool today show that the White House is just using a new means to do the same thing: retaliate against news organizations for coverage the White House doesn’t like,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels reacted to the pool rotation change. “The WHCA is working to find out what this means in practice but what we do know is that restrictions on White House media coverage only hurt the American people who rely on unfiltered journalism to stay informed and make decisions critical to their lives.”
National Press Club president Mike Balsamo, who is also an AP journalist, said that the wire services “are essential to how Americans get their news” before condemning the White House for eliminating that spot in the rotation.
“Excluding these organizations from the White House press pool limits the public’s access to accurate, timely information about their own government. This decision is clearly retaliatory — and it’s the public who loses when trusted news sources are sidelined,” Balsamo stated.
“A free and independent press serves no political party. It serves the people,” he added. “The National Press Club and Press Freedom Center stand with the wire services and with every American who relies on fact-based journalism to stay informed and engaged.”
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