USA: Trump decides on reporter staffing in Oval Office
Washington. Reporter questions that seem ordered, for example about US President Donald Trump's track record in his first days in office, are now part of everyday life in Washington. Trump is choosing his questioners more carefully, press accreditations have been redistributed, and the in-house broadcaster Fox News is getting exclusive interviews.
Now the White House is going a step further: The White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), founded in 1914 as an association of journalists accredited to the White House, is to be partially disempowered.
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The independent association previously had sovereignty over the so-called correspondent pool and thus determined which reporters would report on behalf of all accredited journalists when places were limited. In future, the White House media team would decide this, the government agency said. "The WHCA has long dictated which journalists can ask the President of the United States questions in highly private situations - but no longer," said White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
The "pool" comprises a selection of reporters who are on site - for example at events with limited space - and pass on their information to all accredited journalists as part of a standardized process. This applies, for example, to Trump's appearances in the Oval Office of the White House or the flight in the press cabin of the presidential plane Air Force One.
The journalists' association sees the White House's actions as a clear breach of press freedom in the United States. "In a free country, the leadership should not decide on the composition of the reporters," it said in a statement. The American newspaper "New York Times" described the decision in a spokesperson statement on Platform X as "an attempt to undermine the public's access to independent, trustworthy information about the most powerful person in America."
The current reason for the White House's move is the dispute with the US news agency AP, which has been going on for weeks and is now also being fought out in court. The international agency, which is valued worldwide for its statutory neutrality, did not adopt the new designation "Gulf of America" given by Trump.
AP continues to call the body of water south of the US Atlantic coast, known internationally as the "Gulf of Mexico," by its name, which has been known for 400 years. As a result, AP reporters no longer enjoy the privilege of access to the Oval Office. AP and the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) took legal action against this. However, a judge initially did not impose an injunction against the White House.
Trump himself said he believed the Associated Press was part of the "radical left." He called an unnamed AP reporter a "radical left-wing nutcase." "They don't treat us fairly."
Unlike many others, the pool of reporters, which is put together according to specific criteria and in a rotating process, has direct access to the president and often also the opportunity to ask direct questions. The WHCA regulates the composition of the pool by circulation. For more than 100 years, the organization has always expanded access for as many media professionals as possible, said President Eugene Daniels.
That is not enough for the Trump administration. More media are to be added, and the influence of the traditional media is apparently to be reduced. New additions include local radio and television stations that are close to the people and reflect the "heartbeat of the country".
Many of the local stations belong to the Sinclair media group, which is considered to be strongly right-wing populist and is known for giving its journalists centrally controlled guidelines for reporting. Together with Fox News, they are cited by media scientists as one of the major pillars of Donald Trump's disinformation policy.
RND/dpa
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