By James Oliphant
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.
The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.
TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the White House would determine which media outlets would cover the president in smaller spaces such as the Oval Office.
The White House Correspondents’ Association has traditionally coordinated the rotation of the presidential press pool. Reuters, an international wire service, has participated in the pool for decades.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that while traditional media organizations would still be permitted to cover Trump on a day-to-day basis, the administration plans to change who participates in smaller spaces. The pool system, administered by the WHCA, allowed select television, radio, wire, print and photojournalists to cover events and share their reporting with the broader media.
The three wire services that have traditionally served as permanent members of the White House pool, the AP, Bloomberg and Reuters, on Wednesday released a statement in response to the new policy.
The services “have long worked to ensure that accurate, fair and timely information about the presidency is communicated to a broad audience of all political persuasions, both in the United States and globally. Much of the White House coverage people see in their local news outlets, wherever they are in the world, comes from the wires,” the statement from the three organizations said.
“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press.”
HuffPost called the White House decision a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press.
Der Tagesspiegel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, the WHCA also issued a statement protesting the new White House policy.
The move follows the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from being in the pool because it has declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the name Trump has assigned the body of water, or update its widely followed stylebook to reflect such a change.
Leavitt said the five major cable and broadcast television networks would continue to hold their rotating seats in the pool while the White House would add streaming services. Rotating print reporters and radio reporters would continue to be included, while new outlets and radio hosts would be added.
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lisa Shumaker)
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