The Trump administration is changing the rules for the core group of journalists who cover the White House in an apparent effort to address a federal judge’s ruling on press access.
Reporters from the three leading wire service organizations that regularly cover the White House — The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg — will no longer share a rotating spot in the White House pool under new guidelines released by the administration Tuesday.
All three organizations will now be included in the larger group of print media organizations that are eligible to be part of the pool, usually about a dozen journalists who can attend events with limited space such as the signing of executive orders in the Oval Office or travel with the president on Air Force One. The change was first reported by the New York Post.
The new guidelines — which call for two print media reporters in the pool instead of one — appear to address a suit filed by the AP over its ban from the White House in which federal Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled that the administration can’t ban journalists based on their viewpoints under the First Amendment.
In a statement outlining the new rules, the White House press office said it would choose the members of the pool on a rotating basis.
“Outlets will be eligible for participation in the Pool, irrespective of the substantive viewpoint expressed by an outlet,” the statement said.
The loss of the privileged wire service position for the pool means that the AP, Reuters and Bloomberg would generally have less access to the president.
The White House has for months barred the AP, the nation’s oldest and largest wire service, from attending events as part of the pool because the news organization’s influential stylebook has not followed the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Trump shortly after taking office directed that it be called the Gulf of America.
An AP reporter was able to join pool coverage of a Trump event in the East Room on Tuesday — though the White House had made no public statement that its ban had been lifted. The previous day, reporters from the organization were denied entry to the president’s Oval Office appearance with the president of El Salvador.
AP confirmed that its reporter had been admitted to the East Room event but had no other immediate comment on the new rules. Bloomberg pointed to a previous joint statement from all three organizations, defending the role of wire services in bringing news from the White House to local audiences around the world. Reuters had no immediate comment.