White House ends WHCA ‘monopoly’ in briefing room

The White House has just landed a crushing blow against the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA).

After decades of determining access to the White House, the WHCA will now play second fiddle to the White House communications team.

AP Privileges Revoked

Several weeks ago, the White House revoked the Associated Press’ credentials because the outlet refused to acknowledge the Gulf of America.

AP responded to the banning, “Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing."

“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”

This, however, was the first shot in what would be a far larger attack against the power of the media in regard to White House access.

We Will Handle This

The second shot was White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stating that her staff would determine who had access and who did not.

She stated, "I am proud to announce that we are going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows, and who listen to your radio stations. Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team."

“Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join, fear not. But we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.”

I love and hate this decision at the same time. I am all for smaller outlets having access they never would have been granted by the WHCA, however, I also don’t want outlets in there that are 100% pro-Trump. We need the truth, not slanted news coming out, as this would be just as bad as what legacy media has been doing for the last decade. I just think it is a fine line, and I am hoping Leavitt will choose wisely.

Fox News Fires Back

Among the White House reporters firing back at the new policy was Fox News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.

Heinrich stated, “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House. The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps."

“WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour.”

Heinrich is now being torched by some outlets, such as Breitbart, hinting that she is part of the swamp. Heinrich is an exceptional reporter, so that attack is ludicrous. Like I said, I am on the fence on this, but I tend to defer to Heinrich, while at the same time, I think the White House needs to be opened up to give access to some alt-media outlets. Perhaps the answer is making the room bigger rather than having the same mainstream media outlets in the room with only a small handful of independents being given access on a rotating basis.