White House ‘Directly Selecting Full Reporters’ Press Corps Suspends Full Articles ‘Abrogating Public Service’
The White House announced ‘directly selecting full reporters’ and the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) announced that it would suspend full article participation and article supply, saying that it was ‘abrogating public service and a collapse of the independence of press freedom.’
On the 25th, the White House announced that it would directly decide on the press corps covering President Trump and the reporters and media outlets that could be close enough to ask questions to the president, such as in the Oval Office and Air Force One, and Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, announced on the 26th that the board of directors of the organization representing press corps covering the president would no longer distribute full reports from White House-selected correspondents.
“This committee will not assist this administration or anyone else in any attempt to control independent media coverage of the White House,” said Daniels, who is the chairman and a Politico reporter. “This move by the White House is a threat to press freedom in America. It signals that the government will choose the journalists who cover the president.”
“Going forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “Existing outlets that have been part of the press pool for decades will still be able to join. But we will also provide privileges to qualified outlets that have not been able to share this tremendous responsibility.”
Founded in 1914, the WHCA is an independent organization of reporters who are authorized to speak on behalf of the president, and the White House has agreed to allow a group of reporters to be present in their respective areas with the president, and the selection of the correspondents to be part of the group is left to the White House Correspondents’ Association, which travels to cover events and other trips and pays for the expenses of the media outlets that are part of the pool.
The composition of the pool has changed over time, but it currently consists of three wire service reporters (two newspaper or online reporters and one radio reporter) and four photojournalists (a television crew including a producer, audio technician, and camera operator).
The president is a reporter in a pool format, providing the public with an accurate record of the president’s words and actions due to the limited number of people in the small environment of the Oval Office.
The pool of reporters, who witness the events on the ground, distributes their reports to hundreds of other media outlets that cover him, creating a news feed that is typical of the American news supply chain.
“For decades, the Correspondents’ Association and the news organizations have decided which reporters to rotate into the positions, in order to ensure that the White House does not have the power to select only ‘friendly’ outlets to question the president, regardless of party affiliation,” the New York Times reported on the 26th. “Once the decision is made, the list is sent to the White House, which helps prepare the logistics necessary to grant access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, or other secure areas.”
The New York Times continued, “The White House press pool was created during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency to solve a practical problem: who among the hundreds of White House correspondents would be there when the president needed to cover the news on the street or at the White House? The solution, developed through collaboration between news organizations and presidential administrations of both parties, was to create a small group of correspondents, TV cameras and photographers who would be the eyes and ears of the wider White House press corps in ‘that small press environment. ’” “The White House agreed to allow a group of reporters to be present in the area with the president, and the White House Correspondents’ Association was asked to select the correspondents who would be in the group.”
White House press secretary Levitt said the new pool of reporters was intended to increase accessibility for podcasters, social media influencers and other “news-related content” creators. The New York Times reported that “in recent weeks, the Trump administration has moved to increase access to partisan figures who share the same views as the administration, such as podcaster Sage Steele and Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Brian Glenn.”
The White House press corps travels with the president wherever he goes, riding in a van as part of the presidential motorcade.
When the president visits the U.S. Capitol, the press corps accompanies him. When the president drives through the streets of Moscow or Istanbul, the press corps accompanies him. When the president plays golf for a few hours, the press corps waits nearby, sometimes in a van, to quickly report on what happens to the president.
In a statement announcing the end of the pool of reporters, Daniels said, “The WHCA will never stop advocating for inclusive access, full transparency, and the American people’s right to read, hear, and see the White House’s reports without fear or favor,” providing independent investigative reporting.
The Trump White House has previously added a “new media” section to the briefing room, staffing it with partisan figures who are sympathetic to the Trump administration, such as podcaster Sage Steele, in addition to conservative outlets like Axios and Semafor.
“By deciding which outlets make up the limited pool of reporters each day, the White House will put power back in the hands of the American people,” Levitt said in announcing the plan for the pool. Jacqui Heinrich, a conservative Fox News senior White House correspondent and press corps director, responded to the spokesperson’s comments by saying, “This move does not give power back to the people, it gives power back to the White House.” “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House Correspondents’ Association. The WHCA has been determining the pool for decades because only our media representatives can decide how much of the resources (i.e., staff) each outlet has to deliver the president’s message to the widest possible audience, regardless of the day or time of day,” Heinrich wrote in X.
Pool qualifications are open to members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which has hundreds of correspondents, and to become a full member, a correspondent must first obtain a Capitol Hill press clerkship, reside in the area, and cover the White House full-time.
The association’s website states that “the WHCA recognizes membership in outlets that demonstrate a commitment to the beat and high-quality, fact-based journalism.” Once selected as a full-time reporter, the cost of reporting is borne by the news organization.
Whenever a full-time reporter from the press corps boards Air Force One or travels in the president’s motorcade, the travel expenses are billed to the news organization, and all of the accommodations, hotels, food, internet, and ground transportation are billed to the news organization.
The New York Times reported that “short domestic trips with the president cost thousands of dollars per person, while overseas reporting trips to Asia, Africa, and Europe often cost tens of thousands of dollars per person, and television networks that send multiple people to cover the president’s overseas trips often spend more than $100,000 for a week-long trip.”
Because of the enormous costs, independent journalists, individual bloggers, and small online news organizations have not been in a position to pay these expenses, and have voluntarily chosen not to participate in the press pool system because they would rather have access to the full reports of the larger organization than to be selected as a full-time reporter.
Trump’s press staff has already kicked out the Associated Press for refusing to use the “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico, and has also kicked it out of Air Force One. The Trump administration announced on the 26th that television crews from conservative network Newsmax and correspondents from The Blaze and Axios will be part of the White House press corps. The Trump administration went on to say that “the Associated Press will continue to be excluded from the pool, and Reuters will not be allowed to participate.”
“The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), a Washington, D.C.-based journalist group, has long dictated which reporters can ask questions of the President of the United States,” Spokesperson Rabbitt told X on the 26th, announcing the “press corps directive.”
Fox News reporter Heinrich responded to Spokesperson Rabbitt’s announcement by saying, “Furthermore, the WHCA has advocated for expanded access to news events beyond just the pool in every administration,” adding, “It is up to the White House to decide whether an event is ‘open press’ or ‘pool-only.’ Often, officials restrict access to ‘pool-only’ due to security or space constraints.”
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