As of Feb. 25, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that the White House press office and the Trump administration would determine which journalists would cover the president. They will also limit news outlets allowed to cover news about President Donald Trump, and other important news about the White House that the Trump administration makes public. This announcement was made four days after the White House removed the Associated Press wire service pool coverage and closed access to the president to cover any news given to the public.
After this was said, the Associated Press sued Karoline Leavitt, White House chief-of-staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief-of-staff Taylor Budowich, and other high-ranking people in the White House. Associated Press sued them over restricting them from covering news about the president. The White House did this because the Associated Press wouldn’t refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the“Gulf of America” under an executive order placed by President Donald Trump.
The White House Correspondents’ Association was the original association that would pick out the news outlets and journalists to cover news about the White House as part of a rotating press pool. The press pool is a small number of journalists who are allowed to travel with the president on Air Force One, sit in the Oval Office, and have close access to the president to report back to the American public. With this policy, the WHCA won’t be able to pick the news outlets and journalists. It would be the Trump Administration picking journalists instead. According to the WHPA’s website, the government should not decide whether to publish the press. They also stated that the subject was “deeply disappointing.”
Leavitt also said ABC News, NBC, CBS, and CNN could still be part of the White House press pool rotation. Other news outlets will also cover news for the rotation, but Leavitt has not yet revealed who the new outlets, and/or journalists, will be as of March.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” Eugene Daniels, White House Correspondents Association president, stated in a statement.
Journalists work hard to ensure that they follow media and ethics standards to objectively report the facts that are important to cover. The people can decide what they want to believe and don’t want to consider. With this executive order, journalism can’t be true journalism.
