Fox News and Newsmax are among the outlets who are urging the Trump administration to lift a ban on the Associated Press from accessing certain White House events, a punishment imposed on the wire service for failing to change references of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
A number of news outlets signed on to a letter sent by the White House Correspondents’ Association, and Fox News and Newsmax were among those urging that the AP be reinstated. Status newsletter first reported on the letter.
Fox News has not commented.
Newsmax said in a statement, “We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports the AP’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting. We fear a future administration may not like something Newsmax writes and seek to ban us. This is why news organizations like Newsmax and Fox News are supporting the AP’s First Amendment rights though we may disagree with its editorial point of view from time to time.”
Meanwhile, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has sent its own letter to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
“Conditioning pool access to White House events on the editorial decisions of any news organization violates First Amendment principles,” according to the letter. “All news organizations covering the White House are negatively affected when one peer outlet is singled out in a manner that crosses a constitutional line. As a group, we ask you to restore AP’s pool participation and ensure that going forward access to White House events is not predicated on improper considerations or disagreement with editorial choices.”
More than two dozen media outlets signed on to the letter, including CNN, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
The Reporters Committee letter cites court decisions on press access to the White House, including a 1977 case and a more recent, 2019 incident in which the Trump White House revoked the press pass of Playboy’s Brian Karem. He sued and won.
“The federal courts have been clear for decades that, once the White House opens its facilities to press access, denying access to certain reporters or outlets using ‘arbitrary or content-based criteria’ or ‘for less than compelling reasons’ violates the First Amendment,” the Reporters Committee wrote. “That the White House is conducting its campaign against an accredited member of the press corps short of pulling its credential does not justify its actions.”
Starting last week, the White House restricted Associated Press reporters from various events, including Oval Office pools and larger press conferences, as well as travel on Air Force One. The AP retains its credentials to the White House grounds and to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s briefings, but protested over the reasoning given for not being allowed in to other events. Trump has made clear that it is punishment for the AP’s decision to retain the use of the name Gulf of Mexico in its Stylebook, even though the president signed an executive order changing the name to the Gulf of America. The AP said that it chose to retain Gulf of Mexico as its is an international body of water, and that the name switch has yet to be recognized by other countries.
“We are going to keep them out until such time that they agree it is the Gulf of America,” Trump said earlier this week.
