Who gets access to cover the White House and what their role is have been the subject of debate over the past few weeks.
The two main issues are a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press to contest the White House’s restrictions on its reporters, and the White House’s announcement that it is taking control of the pool system that provides close-up coverage of the president.
Here’s a breakdown on the cases.
White House to pick press pool
In a departure from decadeslong precedent, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that the White House will decide which reporters make up the press pool.
“Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join — fear not,” Leavitt said during a press briefing. “We will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.”
The press pool is a rotating group of journalists from print, TV and radio who cover the president up close each day for the broader press corps. VOA is among the outlets that provides pool coverage.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, or WHCA, has coordinated the press pool since the 1950s. The association’s nearly 800 members represent nearly 300 news organizations. Not all members of the association are part of the presidential pool – only those that can devote the time and resources needed to accompany the president on trips.
The WHCA described the decision to change the system as an affront to press freedom.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels said in a statement. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
Some media outlets that are part of the pool and rely on its coverage have said the change could hamper the spread of reliable information.
AP restrictions
A judge this week described the White House’s ban on The AP as “problematic” but declined to immediately order the White House to restore the news agency’s access.
The nonprofit news agency has been blocked from some White House events, as well as the Oval Office and Air Force One, over its editorial decision to retain the “Gulf of Mexico” name to refer to the body of water that Trump renamed the Gulf of America via an executive order.
After Trump issued his “Gulf of America” executive order, the news agency said it would continue referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging the name Trump had picked in an effort to avoid confusing its international audiences.
Many news outlets have followed The AP’s lead, but others, including VOA, Fox and Axios, have changed their style to reflect the executive order. VOA, like many other media outlets, also subscribes to The AP’s news and video services.
Jane Kirtley, a media ethics and law professor at the University of Minnesota, said it could be considered unethical for news outlets to comply with such orders from a president.
“I think there is an argument that the ethical thing to do for a news organization is to resist that,” Kirtley told VOA. “In order to maintain their independence, they sometimes need to fight back against overreaching by the government.”
In a lawsuit filed Feb. 21, The AP said the ban violates its First Amendment free speech rights and its Fifth Amendment procedural rights, because it had no chance to appeal the decision internally.
Trump has stood by the ban, saying, “We’re gonna keep them [The AP] out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”
At the Monday court hearing, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said The AP had not yet demonstrated that it had suffered irreparable harm.
The White House celebrated McFadden’s ruling. “As we have said from the beginning, asking the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right,” it said in a statement.
Still, McFadden said the White House’s restriction on AP was problematic. “It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” he said.
Viewpoint discrimination is when the government retaliates against individuals or news outlets over specific viewpoints. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that such discrimination constitutes a First Amendment violation because it prevents a level playing field for all opinions.
After the Monday hearing, AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said in a statement that the news agency looked forward to the next hearing “where we will continue to stand for the right of the press and the public to speak freely without government retaliation.”
In its statement after the Monday hearing, the White House said, “We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies.”
The next hearing in The AP’s lawsuit is set for March 20.
