- The move followed a White House announcement that media access to the president would be limited to smaller rooms.
WASHINGTON: The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump's first Cabinet meeting under a new administration policy on media coverage.
The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.
Television crews from ABC and Newsmax, as well as correspondents from Axios, Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR, were allowed to cover the event.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that the White House will determine which media outlets will cover the president in smaller spaces like the Oval Office.
The White House Correspondents' Association has traditionally coordinated the rotation of the presidential press pool. Reuters, the international wire service, has been a member for decades.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said that while traditional media organizations would still be allowed to cover Trump on a daily basis, the administration planned to change the pool of participants in smaller spaces. The pool system, run by WHCA, allowed select television, radio, wire, print and photo journalists to cover events and share their stories with the broader media.
Three news organizations that are traditionally regular members of the White House pool, AP, Bloomberg and Reuters, issued a statement Wednesday in response to the new policy.
The services “have long worked to ensure that accurate, fair and timely information about the presidency reaches a broad audience of all political persuasions, both in the United States and around the world. Much of the White House coverage that people see on their local news outlets, no matter where they are in the world, comes from the networks,” the three organizations said in a statement.
“In a democratic society, it is essential that the public have access to news about their government from an independent, free press.”
HuffPost called the White House's decision a violation of the First Amendment's right to freedom of the press.
Der Tagesspiegel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The WHCA also issued a statement on Tuesday protesting the White House's new policy.
The move followed the Trump administration's decision to remove the Associated Press from the list because it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America (Trump's name for the body of water) or update its widely used style to reflect the change.
Leavitt said the five major cable and broadcast television networks will continue to hold their rotating spots in the pool, while the White House will add streaming services. Rotating print and radio reporters will continue to be included, while new channels and radio hosts will be added.
