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Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, News, US News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, News, US News
The White House has made a controversial new change to who can report on President Trump.
For decades, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) has been responsible for creating a pool of journalists and news organizations that were able to access the president for press purposes.
But this is all set to change as the White House will now decide which news outlets can regularly cover the POTUS.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the changes would rotate traditional outlets from the group and include some streaming services.
She cast the change as a modernization of the press pool, saying the move would be more inclusive and restore 'access back to the American people' who elected Trump.
"Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team," Leavitt said at a daily briefing yesterday (February 25).
"A select group of DC-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly of press access at the White House."
Her announcement came after the Trump administration won a temporary ruling that prohibits Associated Press (AP) from accessing many presidential events as a result of the news outlet refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its new name, Gulf of America.
After being banned from the events, AP sued Leavitt and two other White House officials, citing the First Amendment.
But US District Judge Trevor N McFadden said that AP had not demonstrated it had suffered irreparable harm.
He urged the Trump administration to reconsider its two-week-old ban, however, saying that case law in the circuit 'is uniformly unhelpful to the White House'.
Judge McFadden’s decision is only temporary, and he told lawyers for the Trump administration and the AP that the issue required more exploration before ruling.
Another hearing was scheduled for late March.
The WHCA has since reacted to the White House's plans to take over its job to create a press pool — and it's safe to say it's not in favor of the change.
The organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, said, as per The Guardian: "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.
"For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets."