The White House said on Tuesday that its officials “will determine” which news outlets can regularly cover US President Donald Trump up close – a sharp break from a century of tradition in which a pool of independently chosen news organisations go where the chief executive does and hold him accountable on behalf of regular Americans.
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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.
Leavitt cast the change as a modernisation of the press pool, saying the move would be more inclusive and restore “access back to the American people” who elected Trump. But media experts said the move raised troubling First Amendment issues because the president is choosing who covers him.
“The White House press team, in this administration, will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” Leavitt said at a daily briefing.
She added at another point: “A select group of DC-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly of press access at the White House.”
Leavitt said the White House will “double down” on its decision to bar Associated Press from many presidential events, a departure from the time-tested and sometimes contentious practice for more than a century of a pool of journalists from every platform sharing the presidents’ words and activities with news outlets and congressional offices that cannot attend the close-quarter events.