Lily Huynh/The Cougar
The White House said on Feb. 25 it will determine which news outlets will have access to President Donald Trump.
Selected outlets will be part of a rotating press pool for events and meetings that cannot accommodate the full press corporations, said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The move comes as the White House says it wants to get rid of the monopoly within the White House Correspondents Association as it plans to add representatives who have been denied access to the daily groupings of journalists and more outlets who are well suited to cover the news of the day.
Traditional news services like The Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters will no longer have a permanent spot in every pool. Bloomberg and Reuters will alternate in a single slot. The AP will remain blocked over the organization’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Legacy media outlets like ABC News, CBS news, CNN, Fox News and NBC News would continue to be part of the current daily television rotation, according to Leavitt.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” said President of the WHCA Eugene Daniels. “It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it a drastic change in how the public gets information about its government.
Campus reactions
UH Professor of Practice Geoffrey Roth was not surprised by the announcement citing the relationship between Trump and traditional media was not great to begin with.
Roth said that in his career he has never seen anything like the current climate. There have always been conflicting sides of politicians and journalists Roth said, but there was still a respectable relationship that now appears to be eroding.
“It’s still disconcerting that the president of the United States would do something like that,” Roth said. “But it didn’t surprise me that he did it.”
Concern about the level of cooperation between Republicans and the three branches of government is shared by students like public policy sophomore Joshua Sambrano, who said the system currently has no checks and balances.
Sambrano said that when the president chooses the press, he is essentially picking his letters of recommendation. This, he said, could prevent necessary stories from being told and lead citizens to act on flawed information given from a misrepresentation of government.
“So when he gets to pick his press, it very well makes the argument that not only are the powers of the president being overstepped,” Sambrano said. “The Congress, the Justice Department and the judicial branch are failing to reel him in.”
Journalism senior Mackenzie Sills finds her main concern to be censorship and not being able to give the public the truth.
She finds articles and courses are going to have even more political bias. Trump will want people to cover him in his favor and write information in his favor.
“When it comes to holding people of high authority accountable, that’s a really scary thing to have taken away from our society,” Sills said. “One of the foundations of journalism is holding people in power accountable.”
First Amendment Concerns
Sambrano raised the concern of why people should fear this blatant disregard for the First Amendment, emphasizing that the press has historically been a beacon for information and to criticize government powers.
He also said that the removal of data from government sites, used by both opposing political sides, goes to show that there is an intent to mitigate any bad narratives against the administration.
“The intent to manipulate the press pool, gatekeep information and take down information that is critically necessary for the continuation of effective policy,” said Sambrano. “It not only leads to people who don’t tie with Trump being misrepresented. It leaves them not being represented in data at all when it comes to the government data-keeping.”
Roth said this concerns him, especially when Trump tries to punish the AP for not calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“It’s one thing to disagree with journalists,” Roth said. “It’s another thing to actively try to exclude them from coverage because he disagrees with the language they’re using.”
Roth said the president is trying to incorporate organizations that pretend to be news organizations. It is having a degrading effect on all of journalism in terms of covering the White House and the presidency.
“Trump is making it more difficult for legitimate journalists to do their job while he’s giving access to people I wouldn’t consider to be real journalists,” said Roth. “They’re more rhetoric machines and bothersome when he does something like that.”
Roth said that this does not stop journalists from doing their job, but it’s all an attempt to make traditional journalism organizations’ lives more difficult.
Future of Journalism
This announcement has led Sills to question her interest in covering politics.
In the past, her goal was to cover politics but she does not feel comfortable making it her expertise due to possible repercussions. Sills does not want to choose between her career and her safety.
However, she said this should not discourage other aspiring journalists.
“I would hate to see journalists working now to get discouraged and back out because they’re worried,” Sills said. “It’s totally valid to be worried and concerned, but I hope they follow their passion and get the truth out there. This is what journalism is about, being the voice for the voiceless.”
Roth knows there are still solid journalism organizations out there, true journalism is still going to champion.
To pursue this true reporting, Roth said there needs to be more transparency in reporting so people can regain trust. This includes how they did it, who they talked to and balance.
“For students who are thinking about going into journalism, it is still a noble profession and it’s needed more than ever,” Roth said. “The old Thomas Jefferson line goes, ‘if I had to choose between having a government with no newspapers or newspapers with no government, I’d choose the newspapers.’”
Editor’s note: Professor Roth is The Cougar’s liaison advisor from the Valenti School of Communications.
