Summary
The Associated Press (AP) has again asked a federal judge to lift its ban from White House events, arguing the Trump administration is escalating retaliation over its refusal to adopt Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
The AP says the White House has restricted its access further, including barring a photographer from Air Force One’s arrival.
Trump dismissed AP as “radical left lunatics.”
Major news organizations, including Trump-friendly outlets, urged the administration to reverse the ban, calling it a press freedom violation.
A second court hearing is set for March 20.
I mean, the White House isn’t obligated to talk to the press at all. It’s violating convention here, but not rules. It can, if it wants, only permit in news media that it thinks will provide favorable coverage. And a great deal of what the White House does is to try to put a spin on what the administration is doing, and it does get to select which press representatives it talks to, even if usually, it doesn’t try to use that as leverage as much.
The flip side of that is that, though, is that the press isn’t obligated to talk to the White House at all. I mean, I assume that Trump has no shortage of critics who would like the media to give them eyeball time with the public, don’t mind talking to the press, and will cheerfully provide them with all the material they want.
The traditional media might be less important than it was at one point, but I’m not sure that it’s a good communications strategy to just ignore it.
You’re probably not flooding them with shit if you’re not talking to them.
This. AP should just report the White House news scrubbed of all the biases that Trump prefers and see how they like that.
And it’s such a weird hill to die on. It’s actually one of the things where I don’t believe there’s any ambiguity about whether he has the right to do it. Unless Congress has named it, he can do that and you just have to deal with the fact that this government will call that body of water the Gulf of America.
It’s obviously a stupid thing to do, but out of all the things to take a stand on, it’s just weird, especially after almost a decade of sanewashing his bullshit.
Then again, there hasn’t been any point to having a press pool follow the President in decades, they’re just stenographers, you might as well just read the press releases and type them up instead. Or do real journalism by getting information from sources you’ve cultivated relationships with.