When you hear of a government controlling the press, you probably think of a country like North Korea or a totalitarian regime of the past. Alarmingly, it is also happening right here and right now in America, even if it isn’t to quite the same extent as some places with media censorship.
On Tuesday, February 25, President Trump gave the White House control of the rotation of the “press pool” – a group of reporters having special access to the president. This was supposedly intended to prevent a small group of legacy reporters in DC from monopolizing access to the White House. However, it really seems to be a way to ensure the journalists with the closest access to the president are those who support him—a brazen undermining of the First Amendment.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, or the WHCA, previously decided how to share coverage of the president at events with limited space. For more than a century, the White House press corps has rotated journalists to participate in the daily pool. This consisted of print, TV, wire, and several other types of news outlets. The correspondents in the pool can follow the president to areas where others cannot, including the Oval Office. They ask questions and collect information on what the president does and relay that knowledge to the White House press corps. Now, the president is taking the reins. Trump will decide which reporters can have this exclusive access. To say the least, this is detrimental to the free press.
Trump’s administration additionally banned the Associated Press (AP) from accessing White House press events because it continues to use the term “Gulf of Mexico,” as opposed to “Gulf of America.” The AP filed a lawsuit, claiming that the ban violated its rights to free speech and procedural rights. The judge did not reverse the ban but set another hearing to take place in March.
The president should not have the power to ban a press organization simply because he dislikes a term it uses. The First Amendment grants the right to free speech, and this ban directly violates that principle. Calling it the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Gulf of America may seem like a trivial difference, so one might wonder why the AP wouldn’t simply change its policy. However, this instance might only be the first. What if President Trump forbids the media from discussing entire subjects next?
On Wednesday, February 26, S.V. Date, a senior White House correspondent for HuffPost, was scheduled to be a pool reporter. HuffPost is known to have significantly liberal views, and Date has had conflicts with President Trump before. It should come as no surprise, then, that Date was replaced with a reporter from Axios, a more moderate news outlet. President Trump’s replacement was not to broaden access to the White House but instead to restrict outlets with more liberal views.
Additionally, Reuters was removed from its position as a wire service. Previously, Reuters, the Associated Press and, Bloomberg, three wire services that disseminate information to nationwide organizations, were regular pool reporters. By Wednesday, Bloomberg was the only remaining wire service of the three. Reuters and the AP had been replaced by The Blaze and Newsmax, two staunchly pro-Trump outlets. This demonstrates that the President’s interest is not in allowing more outlets to have the opportunity for access to the White House but instead in propagating lies that make his own image as positive as possible.
Whether your views are more conservative or more liberal, it’s important to see how this transfer of power to the president is problematic. The press must be independent of the government. Otherwise, what was meant to be news may become more akin to propaganda. Whether you are for or against President Trump’s actions and policies, everyone should have access to both sides of every news story. With Trump selecting the journalists who report on his actions, there is the potential for only the positive to be seen, while the negative is swept under the rug.
