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“The White House said on Tuesday it would decide which media organizations participate in the press pool that covers the president, wresting control away from the group of journalists that has done so for decades. Karoline Leavitt, President Donald Trump's spokeswoman, said that while traditional media organizations would still be allowed to cover the president, the administration plans to change who participates. The pool system allows select television, radio, wire, print and photojournalists to cover events in smaller spaces such as the Oval Office and share their reporting with the broader media…
“The WHCA [White House Correspondents' Association], which has previously coordinated the pool rotation, said it had done so to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of the public. ‘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 statement.” Reuters
Here’s our coverage of the dispute earlier this month between the White House and the Associated Press. The Flip Side
“Washington Post editorial page editor David Shipley is leaving the paper as its opinion section shifts its focus to supporting and defending the topics of personal liberties and free markets, owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wrote in a memo to staff on Wednesday. The section will cover other topics too, but will not publish viewpoints that oppose those two pillars, Bezos wrote.” Reuters
The left is disappointed by the treatment of the WHCA, arguing that the administration is punishing adversarial reporting.
“New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker didn’t say this lightly: ‘Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign,’ the Trump White House’s pool takeover ‘reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.’…
“Leavitt responded to Baker on X with a clown emoji and called him a ‘left-wing stenographer’ posing as a journalist… Leavitt and company claim they are trying to expand access to a greater number of media outlets, but that’s disingenuous at best, since these actions are punitive in nature. For example: Katie Miller, a top adviser to Elon Musk and DOGE, replied to Baker and Leavitt and said ‘guess he won’t be a pooler anytime soon.’”
Brian Stelter, CNN
“The real message behind the move was plain: The Trump administration will punish news organizations for unfavorable coverage and uncomfortable questions… [This is] part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to bully the press: It had already restricted the Associated Press’s Oval Office access over the outlet’s refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America,’ as the president demands…
“Then, on Wednesday, it kicked Reuters and HuffPost out of the pool, while adding right-wing, pro-Trump outlets Newsmax and the Blaze to the rotation. ‘This move does not give the power back to the people,’ Fox News’ White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich wrote Tuesday, rejecting Leavitt’s Orwellian framing. ‘It gives power to the White House.’”
Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair
Regarding the Washington Post, “[This is] the same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary—the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70 percent of which will go directly into Trump’s pockets…
“His core argument [for killing the Harris endorsement] was that the worst thing a newspaper’s opinion section could do is appear to be taking one side politically… So the solution is to have the owner spend months shipping millions off to Trump HQ? And then declare that certain opinions will now be verboten in the Post’s pages?…
“Back in October, Bezos claimed he was saddened by even the concept that his personal interests might influence the Post’s content. But of course—when one of the wealthiest humans in the history of the species decides to block critiques of ‘free markets’ from one of the nation’s most important news outlets, it has nothing to do with any of his interests. Completely unrelated.”
Joshua Benton, The Atlantic
The right has little sympathy for the WHCA, arguing that it is biased in favor of Democrats.
The right has little sympathy for the WHCA, arguing that it is biased in favor of Democrats.
“When the Biden administration revoked the press credentials of 442 reporters [in 2023], the Washington Post reported that the WHCA took an ‘officially noncommittal stance.’… The purge came after the Biden White House changed the rules on who could receive the credentials, requiring them to obtain credentials from Congress or the Supreme Court…
“[Similarly, the WHCA] said nothing publicly when the Biden administration began requesting questions ahead of time during press briefings. Some reporters began complaining about the practice, so the WHCA held a Zoom call about it… During the call, leaders ‘advised print reporters to push back against requests by the White House press team to learn of questions in advance, or simply to not respond to the Biden team’s inquiries,’ the [Daily] Beast reported. At no time did the WHCA release a statement about the practice.”
Ashe Schow, Daily Wire
“I was broken in a very real way by the experience of the last four years, the experience of watching Joe Biden molder into mindless decrepitude in a way the public was acutely aware of but the media stridently ignored…
“The stridency of it is what was unforgivable: It was not enough for our mainstream betters to pretend that Biden was fine, or to arrogantly dismiss our concerns, they went much further than that and openly attacked anyone — even those of their own progressive tribe — who dared speak up about Biden’s clear deterioration…
“The White House Correspondents’ Association is outraged that it will no longer be allowed close access to the president or his White House staff. I can only shoot back with disgust: Well, what the hell did you do with all that access while you had it for the last four years? We know the answer: They served the bidding of their party, not their nominal profession.”
Jeffrey Blehar, National Review
Regarding the Washington Post, “They won a Pulitzer for advancing what turned out to be a hoax (Russia collusion), and buried a story that turned out to be true (Hunter Biden's laptop). Bezos' paper cheered censorship of ‘misinformation,’ ran tendentious fact-checks on the progressive-establishment's opponents and critics, and somehow missed the fact that the titular head of that establishment had gone senile…
“At this point, the Post has to do something about its collapse in readership. The paper lost $100 million last year alone, not chump change even for a man of Bezos' wealth, and its online traffic dropped by 90%… I'd love to believe that this is indicative of a road-to-Damascus moment for Bezos about the nature of his industry and the corruption it has wrought. I suspect, however, that this is about keeping up with the vibe shift.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
