By Justine McDaniel / Washington Post / Feb. 25, 2025
The Trump administration will determine which journalists participate in the White House press pool, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, breaking with nearly a century of practice in which the independent White House Correspondents’ Association has overseen the rotating group of news outlets that cover the president in Washington and on travels.
It is an aggressive move by the government to control which news outlets have access to the president — one that is unprecedented in modern American politics and comes amid Trump’s long-standing efforts to erode Americans’ trust in fact-based reporting.
As journalists and media critics warned that White House control of the press pool threatens the foundations of a free press and could allow the administration to more easily block reporters from the White House, Trump boasted about the move.
“We’re going to be calling those shots,” he said from the Oval Office late Tuesday afternoon.
For decades, the press pool has been coordinated by the White House Correspondents’ Association, which is made up of hundreds of print, television, radio and online journalists and works to ensure press access to the president so that journalists can accurately convey what is happening in Washington to the American people. The WHCA organizes the outlets that regularly cover the president in a rotating group, or pool, of journalists who share their reporting with all the association’s members.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Eugene Daniels condemned the step after Leavitt’s Tuesday afternoon press briefing.
“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,” Daniels said in a statement. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
The White House did not give the organization — which for decades has organized the rotation of reporters, photographers, producers and others who cover the president — any advance notice of the announcement, Daniels said.
It constitutes “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government,” said Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” Brown said.
Leavitt did not say the White House will remove any currently participating outlets, but she said the administration will add additional outlets and said her team will pick pool participants on a “day-to-day basis.”
The step came two weeks after the Trump administration barred Associated Press journalists from its official events as punishment for the wire service’s decision not to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the name Trump has ordered for federal use, the Gulf of America. On Sunday, the White House Correspondents’ Association filed a motion to submit a legal brief in support of the Associated Press.
Leavitt made the announcement about the press pool after celebrating a federal judge’s decision Monday to deny the AP’s bid to have its access restored immediately. She stood in front of two screens that showed an image of the Gulf of Mexico, labeled “Gulf of America,” stamped with the word “VICTORY” in large type, a reference to the ruling.
See Washington Post for the balance of this article.
AN ENDORSEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC COURAGE (Poem)
Woodward and Bernstein formed a formidable
team.
Digging deep,
relentless
pursuits, mysterious meetings in a dark
garage,
creation of publication pieces involving dramatic editorial
decisions.
They poked and prodded the beast, who
longed
to lash out and claw them
apart.
The stuff of
legend.
Hollywood called, rewarding with the casting of
Redford and Hoffman,
Glamourous star
power.
And who can forget the source’s name?
Deepthroat!
Box-office
success.
A newspaper’s reputation firmly
established.
However, in the years that followed, I pondered the
notion
such legend-building was perhaps a bit too
over-the-top,
frequent TV appearances by the duo a might too
self-congratulatory,
the acclaim possibly disproportionate to the actual
threat.
After all, even a political beast must follow the law,
right?
Certainly, its full reach was always restrained,
correct?
Yet, I now suddenly appreciate the degree of courage
required.
For today’s beast casts a formidable shadow;
lashing
out unhindered by normal checks and
balances –
fabulist accusations, obsessed with vengeance and
menace.
Clearly, the vigilance required to counter this current threat
necessitates
a journalistic virtue not available for purchase on
Amazon.
Very nice, Steve R. Thank you.
How much longer are we going to pretend we live in a country where a constitution still exists?
Isn’t it obvious yet, to any critically thinking person, that we are now living in a post constitutional America?
All Hail King Dump!
Best question, John Shaw. It turns out the only rails this time around are the courts and the people. And we’ve seen how the top court has been compromised. That then leaves the people. But nearly half of us wish to sing hall to the king.
Do we know who picks, or how the members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, itself, are chosen?
/s/ Chris Kennedy
From Washington Post:
The press pool has traditionally included reporters and photographers from wire services — the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News — as well as representatives from radio and television networks, and a rotating slot among print journalists from outlets such as The Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
When the president travels, a 13-member pool tracks his movements; for events in Washington, an expanded pool is assembled. Journalists from the outlets take turns being in the pool, and whoever is in the pool on a given day shares their reporting with the rest of the outlets.
Thanks for info.
/s/ Chris Kennedy
If the Association is an independent body they have the right to sue the White House and they should. I would donate that cause, where do I sign up? The White House is a publicly owned building, housing people who we “hired” to represent us, we should 100% be allowed to monitor and report about what they are doing just like any other employer does. And that monitoring and reporting should not be partisan or parsed out to only those who they deem worthy. Let the public decide who they want to listen to and trust.
Man! This just pisses me off! It pisses me off when all administrations do it, not just this one.
If I was the White House Correspondents’ Association, I’d pull everyone from these White House briefings. They will be listening to a constant array of lies anyway. Better spend those hours looking into the administration and helping the effort to combat those lies.