In a direct assault on the First Amendment, President Donald Trump recently barred The Associated Press’ reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One as well as participation in coverage pools. The White House claims the publication was indefinitely banned due to its failure to recognize Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Reuters was also similarly banned.
This action followed Trump seizing control of the daily press pool that’s makeup was formerly determined by the White House Correspondents’ Association. For decades the WHCA, a non-partisan, private group, has been choosing a small group of publications to cover the president. Now under Trump’s administration, the White House will have final say on who gets to report on the president, instead of the WHCA.
These actions constitute an attack on the fourth estate. Journalism is designed to be a completely external force that acts as the last check and balance on government. Without independence, and worse, with the executive branch dictating and regulating coverage on itself, the American people, and further, our democracy, are at great risk of losing some of the tenets of our democracy that our founders wrote into our constitution hundreds of years ago.
“Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s coverage not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, but it also plainly violates the First Amendment,” said Julie Pace, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor, in a statement responding to the ban.
The First Amendment explicitly protects freedom of the press, and the Supreme Court has long upheld that the government cannot manipulate the press to serve its own interests. In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Court affirmed that government interference with journalistic independence is a grave constitutional violation.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said media access to the Oval Office and Air Force One is a “privilege” and not a “legal right.” Yet the White House only applies the word “privilege” to publications they disagree with. After seizing control of the press pool, the White House hopes to include media outlets that don’t fall under the legacy media umbrella. But by doing so, they are setting a double standard, barring publications they believe are biased against the administration and replacing them with outlets such as The Blaze, which align politically with the administration.
Previously, the pool included a mix of reporters from valued outlets such as The New York Times and Fox News. These legacy media outlets all follow the same standards of journalistic ethics, including fact-checking, accountability and impartiality.
While it is true that some mainstream media outlets have less cultural relevance with the rise in popularity of social media, Trump has selectively granted access to overtly partisan outlets while restricting access to globally-respected news outlets like AP. This cherry-picking of favored media blocks the public’s access to truthful reporting.
This shift in protocol possesses problems, not only to journalists but to the general public.
If only government-approved publications can report on the president, the articles citizens are reading could be biased to a far greater degree than what Trump believes the AP was complicit in.
Both AP and Reuters are national news outlets that rely on coverage of the White House and Air Force One not only for revenue but also to inform the public. They have thoughtfully served the American people at no small expense for decades. Hand-picking press coverage sets a precedent for future administrations to further push press access, towards exclusivity, making it harder for independent journalists to cover our government without fear of government interference or worse, retaliation.
No administration — Democratic or Republican — should be allowed to dictate which journalists can report on government affairs. The press serves the public, not the president. If Trump was truly concerned about fairness in the press, he would invite more diverse publications to the press pool instead of silencing them. This policy should be reversed immediately in defense of press freedom and the people’s right to information.