The White House Correspondents’ Association, led by Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich called on the Trump administration to immediately restore access to the representatives of the media organisations it barred, arguing that the move sets a dangerous precedent for free speech.
Reporters from three major news organisations were denied access to the White House on Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump said he was barring them because of reporting he found to be “fake news.”
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The media outlets, CNN, MS NOW and Politico, have previously been targeted by the Republican president, particularly CNN, who Trump kicks his antics up a notch, regularly mocking their reporters and lambasting their authenticity.
The actions were a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable, and the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States.
Trump said on Friday that he would ban all three outlets because of coverage he disliked.
White House reporters from the two cable networks — Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW — both went live to report they’d been turned away, their press badges deactivated, when arriving for their jobs at the White House.
Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated. All three news outlets hinted at legal action.
“We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights,” Politico Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Greenberger said in a statement to the Politico newsroom. A CNN statement said the network “will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account."
And MS NOW said it “intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”
In his second term, Trump and his administration have routinely punished certain media outlets, both in the courtroom and through regulatory action.
Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings, or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where he called CNN’s Kailtan Collins “very dumb and unhappy”.
The White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich called on the administration to immediately restore the three outlets' access.
“The implications extend beyond these organisations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” she said.
“The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinise those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favourably.”
The move follows the president’s decision last year to bar Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
The AP said that it would note, when appropriate, that Trump had ordered the water body, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters, renamed the “Gulf of America.”
The US news agency filed a lawsuit against their barring, and the case remains ongoing.
Since returning to office, Trump has pursued other legal action against a variety of different outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.
His administration is also involved in a long-simmering confrontation involving ABC over renewal of its broadcast licenses.
The AP said on Saturday it supported the news organizations banned this week. In a statement, the news cooperative said: “No news organisation — or person — should be retaliated against by the government over the words they use.”