Reuters, AP, Others Kick as Trump Bars Access to Key Presidential Events

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The White House yesterday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organisations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.

The White House stopped an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper from covering the event, Reuters reported.

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 (WHCA) 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 organisations 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, yesterday released a statement,  in response to the new policy. 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.

In a joint response, Reuters, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News today issued the following statement: The three permanent wires in the White House pool, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and Reuters, 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. It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press. We believe that any steps by the government to limit the number of wire services with access to the President threatens that principle.

“ It also harms the spread of reliable information to people, communities, businesses and global financial markets that heavily depend on our reporting,” the statement said.

The statement was signed by Julie Pace, Executive Editor, The Associated Press; John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg and Alessandra Galloni, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters.