White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday said the Trump administration will choose which media outlets will participate in the White House press pool moving forward.
Historically, that duty fell to the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an independent body consisting of journalists and news outlets that is separate from the White House itself but coordinates with administration officials on which reporters and photographers participate in the pool.
In years past, news outlets like the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, the New York Times, CNN, Politico, the Huffington Post, Fox News and Bloomberg participated in the White House press pool, covering the sitting president at the time and their public and private events. Their reports and photographs were compiled into rolling news reports sent by e-mail on a daily basis, which other news outlets could use for their own reporting.
At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Leavitt suggested the arrangement disenfranchised startup media outlets who were deprived of the opportunity to participate in the pool. There are no plans to terminate pool participation of legacy media outlets, she said.
“Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join, but we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility,” Leavitt affirmed, adding that the White House will coordinate access to “ensure the president’s remarks are heard far and wide around this world.”
The change comes after the White House prevented numerous reporters and photographers with the AP from attending events involving Trump over their refusal to update their AP StyleBook to recognize the Atlantic Gulf as the “Gulf of America.” Trump signed an executive order unilaterally changing the name of the body of water in January.
On Monday, a federal judge overseeing the AP’s lawsuit against a number of White House officials refused a motion that would have forced the White House to grant access to Trump once again, but encouraged Trump administration officials to reconsider the ban, saying the legal precedent was likely on the AP’s side.
A number of news organizations previously wrote a letter to the White House in support of lifting the ban on AP reporters and photographers. Those outlets included Newsmax and Fox News, whose prime-time commentary program typically involves right-of-center rhetoric that has curried favor with Trump and his political allies in the past.
