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white house correspondents' association
In Latest Attack on Media, Trump White House Takes Control of Press Pool
"This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States," said the head of the White House Correspondents' Association. "In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps."
Feb 25, 2025
As part of U.S. President Donald Trump's long-running war with the news media, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Tuesday that the administration will now decide which outlets get to participate in the presidential press pool.
The widely condemned announcement came just a day after U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, declined to lift the White House's ban on Associated Press reporters attending press briefings and Air Force One flights because the outlet refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" in line with the president's January executive order.
The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) has managed the press pool since the 1950s. While the group has faced its share of criticism, journalists and others also weren't buying Leavitt's attempt to frame the Trump takeover of the responsibility as an effort to include reporters previously denied the significant access to the president that pool members have.
"This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps," WHCA president Eugene Daniels said in a Tuesday statement.
As Daniels detailed:
For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents' Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA's membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.
Since its founding in 1914, the WHCA has sought to ensure that the reporters, photographers, producers, and technicians who actually do the work—365 days of every year—decide amongst themselves how these rotations are operated, so as to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners.
To be clear, the White House did not give the WHCA board a heads-up or have any discussions about today's announcements. But the WHCA will never stop advocating for comprehensive access, full transparency, and the right of the American public to read, listen to and watch reports from the White House, delivered without fear or favor.
His remarks followed reporting that the WHCA was trying to quietly resolve the dispute with the AP. CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter said on social media last week: "So why aren't more reporters and media outlets speaking out more vehemently to help the AP? In part, I'm told, it's because the WH Correspondents' Association is trying to work out a solution behind the scenes."
The WHCA did file a motion on Sunday seeking to submit an amicus brief in the AP case before McFadden. The document states that "the government should never interfere with the operation of an independent press, nor should it demand that reporters adopt the government's messaging, framing, and, indeed, ideological worldview. Such conduct is wholly at odds with the Constitution and cannot be permitted to persist."
boy i'll tell you, it does not seem like the white house correspondents' association read this well at all
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— Alex Kirshner ( @alexkirshner.com) February 25, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Daniels was far from alone in blasting the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday. The APreported that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it "a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government."
Bruce D. Brown, the group's president, said that "the White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency."
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on social media that it "is alarmed by the White House's decision to pick who can be part of the press pool. Given the White House's decision to ban the AP from pool activities in retaliation for an editorial choice, it is concerning that the administration will now exert yet more control over which outlets are able to access the president and events he attends."
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said that "the president does not get to handpick his news coverage, and he cannot condition access to the White House on an outlet's speech alone. The First Amendment protects the rights of outlets to make their own editorial decisions, but this decision opens the door for government punishment of outlets that don't comply with the White House's editorial demands. This is not just about silencing reporters but about dodging accountability and keeping the American people in the dark about important news that impacts each and every one of them."
Some journalists pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker, warned that the Trump White House is "on the way to establishing its own version of a Kremlin press pool, approved media only."
Glasser co-authored the book Kremlin Rising with her husband, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. He said Tuesday that "having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin's reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access."
"The message is clear," Baker continued. "Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it does not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories."
MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend—who served as chief spokesperson for former Vice President Kamala Harris—suggested that "the reporters should refuse to comply and should continue the precedent of deciding the pool themselves."
"Do I wish I could have picked the reporters in the press pool who were covering the VP when I worked at the White House? Some days… yes," she said. "But that is not how this works."
This article has been updated with comment from the ACLU.
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As Trump Targets AP, Media Urged to Resist Moves Like 'Gulf of America' Renaming
"It's at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership," asserted one campaigner.
Feb 14, 2025
First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world's largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader's new name for the Gulf of Mexico.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press "continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change" of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president's official airplane.
"The level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation."
The New York-based AP, which provides news content to roughly 15,000 media outlets in over 100 countries, has explained that, because the gulf is an international body of water, it will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico because Mexico—whose president on Thursday threatened to sue Google for adopting Trump's name change—and other countries do not recognize the new name.
In contrast, the AP said it will call Denali, the highest peak in North America, Mt. McKinley following a name change by Trump because the Alaska mountain is located entirely inside the United States.
Budowich said the AP's decision on the Gulf of Mexico exposes the agency's "commitment to misinformation."
"While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces," he argued.
But critics said the Trump administration's behavior is about a lot more than just a spat over a name change.
"Of course, this is just more petty behavior by a president seeking to punish any news organization that doesn't follow his dictates, regardless of how ridiculous they may be," Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, told Common Dreams on Friday.
"It's at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership," Karr stressed. "They need to advocate for themselves, their colleagues, and for journalism writ large."
"The good news is that more than a dozen of the mass market news outlets have refused to adopt Trump's name change for the Gulf of Mexico," he added. "That's a start. They now need to speak out against his First Amendment threats, despite the consequences. There is much more at stake now than just having access to the White House."
"By defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well."
Writing for Public Notice Friday, Noah Berlatsky commended the AP for "not changing their style to suit the whims of a would-be tin-pot dictator."
"And by defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well," Berlatsky added.
Those include the heads of the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, National Press Club, PEN America, and Society of Professional Journalists.
"The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors' decisions," WHCA president Eugene Daniels said earlier this week.
RSF USA executive director Clayton Weimers said in a statement that "the level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation."
"A sitting president is punishing a major news outlet for its constitutionally protected choice of words," Weimers added. "Donald Trump has been trampling over press freedom since his first day in office."
President Trump banning the Associated Press from an event over their usage of "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America" may seem more absurd than alarming, but Trump's attacks on the free press are no joke.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) February 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Numerous experts highlighted what they called the unconstitutionality of banning a media outlet from press briefings for political reasons.
"The AP—a major news agency that produces and distributes reports to thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV broadcasters around the world—has had long-standing access to the White House," Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Friday.
"It is now losing that access because its exercise of editorial discretion doesn't align with the administration’s preferred messaging," Terr added. "That's viewpoint discrimination, and it's unconstitutional."
Berlatsky wrote: "As ABC, Meta, the LA Times, The Washington Post, and Google demonstrate, you lose 100% of the fights you preemptively and despicably surrender. The AP has already won an important victory by refusing to change the Gulf of Mexico to some random other name at the whim of a power-mad orange gasbag."
"If any portion of Trump's agenda is to be stopped, we need people and organizations who are willing to defy him and speak truths he doesn't want to hear," he added. "Despite Trump, the
AP still calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it's reminding us what freedom looks like. It's also demonstrating us that if you don't want to lose your freedoms, you have to use them."
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Palestinian Journalists Urge US Media to Boycott White House Correspondents' Dinner
"The Biden administration's ongoing support for Israel's genocidal policies implicates it directly in the relentless targeting and massacring of journalists in Gaza, including hundreds of our colleagues and their families."
Apr 05, 2024
Palestinian journalists this week issued an appeal to their U.S. counterparts urging them to boycott the April 27 White House Correspondents' Association dinner over the Biden administration's complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"In the past six months alone, the Israeli military has executed over 125 Palestinian journalists in Gaza—10% of Gaza's community of journalists," notes the appeal, which is being organized with the help of Adalah Justice Project and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. "The year 2023 marked the bloodiest year for journalists worldwide in over a decade, with over 75% of killed journalists targeted by Israel’s attacks on Gaza."
"As Palestinian journalists, we urgently appeal to you, our colleagues globally, with a demand for immediate and unwavering action against the Biden administration's ongoing complicity in the systematic slaughter and persecution of journalists in Gaza," the authors wrote.
"We bear the enormous burden of exposing the realities of Israel's genocidal campaign to the world while living through it in real-time. Israel has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians as we watch on," the journalists said. The death toll in Gaza now exceeds 33,000—mostly women and children—with at least 75,550 other Palestinians wounded since October 7.
The appeal continues:
In Gaza, journalism is synonymous with putting our lives on the line as Israel methodically targets us in its desperate bid to silence our voices and obscure the grim reality of its genocidal actions and its project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. For Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the blue press vest does not offer us protection, but rather functions as a red target.
The Biden administration's ongoing support for Israel's genocidal policies implicates it directly in the relentless targeting and massacring of journalists in Gaza, including hundreds of our colleagues and their families.
"Western media has played an integral role in manufacturing consent for Israel's ongoing violence against the Palestinian people, while obfuscating U.S. complicity," the journalists continued. "Over the past six months, the mainstream press has become the mouthpiece of the homicidal Israeli regime, promoting dehumanizing anti-Palestinian propaganda and platforming genocide apologists and perpetrators, while simultaneously ignoring, downplaying, and underreporting Israel's war crimes against Palestinians."
"The White House Correspondents' dinner is an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access," the appeal argues. "For journalists to fraternize at an event with President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris would be to normalize, sanitize, and whitewash the administration's role in genocide."
"As journalists reporting from the belly of the beast, you have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity," the Palestinians implored U.S. journalists. "It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs."
The appeal's authors noted that American media professionals have demanded justice for journalists like Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—who numerous probes found was intentionally killed by Israeli forces in 2022—and Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Washington Post columnist gruesomely murdered in 2018 by Saudi Arabian operatives in Turkey.
"It is past time journalists take action for journalists in Gaza," the Palestinians asserted. "We call on all journalists of conscience to stand with us and uplift our call to boycott the White House Correspondents' dinner."
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