Trump is awful!
White House sidelines wires
A reporter for the Associated Press was allowed into an East Room ceremony yesterday – the first time the wire service was permitted entry into such an event since the White House banned the outlet for using the name Gulf of Mexico back in February. But then the hammer came down.
Instead of letting The AP back in the press pool, as required by a federal judge, the White House said it is removing the wire spot in the daily press corps rotation altogether. Today none of the wires — not The AP or Reuters or Bloomberg — are on pool duty. Until February, all three were a daily part of the pool.
The change appears designed to withstand legal scrutiny while still punishing The AP. Will it work? Minutes ago the wire service made a new court filing calling the new White House policy "a clear violation of the court's injunction order" and asking Judge Trevor McFadden to enforce his order.
There is another hearing in the ongoing lawsuit tomorrow, so we'll learn what the judge thinks soon enough. For now there are two key impacts:
News consumers lose. Countless local news outlets rely on The AP and other wires for just-the-facts coverage because they don’t have White House correspondents of their own.
reliablesources@newsletters.cnn.com
| 