Trump White House Takes Control Of Press Pool To Allow More Conservative Outlets Access, Breaking Decades-Old Precedent

The White House announced that it “will determine” which news outlets will be allowed in the press pool, given close access to President Donald Trump for regular coverage of presidential events. On Wednesday, it removed a liberal media outlet, HuffPost, from the rotation of reporters granted close access to the president, breaking a long-established precedent of journalists. 

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the press about the changes in a news briefing, saying that the Trump administration would determine which outlets have access to the president as part of the pool allowed into the Oval Office. The move follows the government’s arguments this week in a federal lawsuit over access filed by The Associated Press.

“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” Leavitt said at the news briefing.

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) previously determined the rotation of pool reporters. The association said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press.”

“For years, the WHCA had created a format for standards, length, accuracy for the American people that they could trust that those standards created by the folks that actually do the work were understood by everyone and you could trust the reports that were coming out of that,” Eugene Daniels, president of the WHCA, said during an appearance on MSNBC.

“That can no longer be trusted, frankly,” he added. “Because at the end of the day, these standards are going to be created by the folks that are being covered.”

The announcement upended decades of protocol of journalists determining which rotating reporters travel with the president.

White House official Allison Schuster wrote to HuffPost, “I’m so sorry for the late notice, but we actually can’t fit you in the pool tomorrow.” 

The White House was later called Axios. Axios‘ co-founder, Mike Allen, attended Leavitt’s first briefing with the press, given a “special seat.”

The White House announced on Feb. 14 that it was barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as Trump has ordered. The AP immediately sued over the restriction, but on Monday, a federal judge declined to restore the wire service’s access.

The top editors of the AP, Reuters and Bloomberg denounced the restriction. They said the unprecedented action threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.

In her first day as press secretary, Leavitt announced that the drone seen over New Jersey last year were authorized and not foreign owned.