This post was updated March 30 at 9:57 p.m.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it would choose which news outlets had access to the White House press pool – a move that upended over a century of precedent and marked yet another push for executive control by President Donald Trump.
Since its inception in 1914, the White House Correspondents’ Association has chosen which outlets can send reporters to the president’s most critical briefings and intimate press events, acting independently of the White House’s influence while choosing a balanced and reliable array of perspectives.
By taking over this responsibility and adding “new media voices” like podcasters, social media influencers and content creators, the Trump administration is not giving “access back to the American people,” as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Rather, the administration is blatantly meddling with the freedom of the press, crafting a calculated right-wing narrative that dangerously skews news coverage – and public opinion – in its favor.
This takeover of the press pool hasn’t been the administration’s first transgression when it comes to restricting the press. In February, the Associated Press, an internationally recognized outlet for reliable and balanced news, was banned from the Oval Office for continuing to use the “Gulf of Mexico” instead of the “Gulf of America,” which was recently renamed by Trump in a controversial executive order.
This clear retaliation against a respected news organization signals a perilous shift toward state-controlled messaging, where access to the White House is granted only to those who act in accordance with the administration’s agenda.
With the administration taking control of the press pool just a few weeks after its actions against the Associated Press, there is no doubt that Trump and his supporters are actively working to intimidate the press, suppress any form of dissent and erode the very foundation of a free and independent media necessary for democracy.
In order for the American people to hold public officials responsible and critique any abuses of power, those people must be able to access authentic information about the actions of the government – especially when it comes to the White House.
But with the White House now handpicking who has direct access, our government controls the narrative, leaving Americans far more vulnerable to misinformation and propaganda in favor of Trump.
While many of Trump’s reckless actions and openly false statements seem to inevitably find their way into news outlets across the nation and internationally, it is naive to assume rotating traditional media outlets out of the White House press corps will not have dire consequences on the quality and veracity of news that reaches Americans.
Influencers and content creators part of the so-called “new media voices” will not be sharp critics of the administration that granted them this unprecedented access to the White House, meaning that every spot taken from a legacy media outlet is a voice that won’t be as inclined to deliver the hard-hitting questions necessary to hold the president accountable.
Oftentimes, it’s a well-worded challenge aimed at the press secretary, a White House staffer or the president himself that reveals the administration’s most pressing shortcomings.
But many of these challenges come from correspondents stationed in the exclusive confines of the briefing room or Oval Office – spaces that will now have fewer professional journalists and more right-wing media personalities.
To very little surprise, Trump has become complicit in creating the corrupt media cycle he constantly pins on others. With the anti-press rhetoric of the current administration, it’s a fair assumption that the new media entering the press room will be nothing more than mouthpieces for the White House, beginning a grim era of political propaganda overshadowing journalistic integrity.
Donald Trump has called journalists “the enemy of the people.”
However, his move to silence reliable journalism shows who the real enemy of Americans is – the man taking control of the press.
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