White House limits access for Reuters, Bloomberg in move raising press freedom concerns
Wire services including Reuters and Bloomberg News will no longer hold a permanent slot in the small pool of reporters who cover President Donald Trump, the White House said, as it moves to exert greater control over who gets to ask him questions and report on his statements in real time.
The decision comes after the Trump administration last week lost a court challenge brought by another wire service, the Associated Press, over its earlier exclusion from the press pool.
The pool typically consists of around 10 outlets that follow the president wherever he goes, whether it is a meeting in the Oval Office where he makes statements or answers questions, or trips at home or abroad.
Under the new policy, wire services will lose their customary spot in the pool and will instead be part of a larger rotation with about 30 other newspaper and print outlets.
Given their mission to deliver real-time information to other news organizations and readers, wire services tend to cover the president and the White House more closely on a daily basis than most outlets.
Other media customers, particularly local news organizations that have no presence in Washington, rely on the wires for up-to-date reporting, video and audio.
Financial markets are also dependent on the wire services’ real-time reports of statements the president makes.
“Reuters news coverage reaches billions of people each day, mostly through the thousands of news organizations around the world that subscribe to Reuters services,” a Reuters spokesperson said. “It is essential to democracy that the public have access to independent, impartial and accurate news about their government. Any steps by the U.S. government to limit access to the president threatens that principle, both for the public and the world’s media.”
Reuters remains committed to covering the White House in an impartial, accurate and independent way, the spokesperson added.
AP said the administration’s actions were a grave disservice to the American people.
“We are deeply disappointed that the administration has chosen to restrict the access of all wire services, whose fast and accurate White House coverage informs billions of people every single day, rather than reinstate The Associated Press to the wire pool,” spokesperson Lauren Easton said in a statement to Reuters.
Bloomberg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Until the current administration, the three wire services – AP, Bloomberg and Reuters – were all standard members of the pool. But the White House barred AP in February after it refused to refer to the body of water south of the United States as the “Gulf of America” as Trump had ordered it be called.
After shutting out the AP, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said her team would determine “who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office.” Up until then those places had been decided by the White House Correspondents’ Association, an organization made up of journalists who cover the White House and the president.
According to guidance provided to Reuters by a White House official on Tuesday, Leavitt will have the discretion to determine the members of the pool on a daily basis “to ensure that the president’s message reaches targeted audiences and that outlets with applicable subject-matter expertise are present as events warrant.”
The official said outlets will be eligible to be included in the pool “irrespective of the substantive viewpoint expressed by an outlet.”
Last week, a federal judge in Washington ordered the administration to allow AP journalists to attend events open to similar types of news organizations in the Oval Office and on Air Force One, as well as larger spaces in the White House while its lawsuit moves forward.
The judge found Trump’s White House retaliated against the AP over its editorial choices, violating protections for free speech under the U.S. Constitution. The White House is appealing the ruling.