The White House announced Tuesday that it would decide which journalists get access to US President Donald Trump’s events, stripping the power from an independent association of media outlets that has done so for around a century.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) should no longer have a “monopoly” over choosing the members of the pool, the small group of reporters who cover Trump in places like the Oval Office and Air Force One.
The WHCA swiftly condemned the move, saying it “tears at the independence of a free press.”
It comes amid an escalating battle between the White House and the Associated Press news agency, which Trump has barred from presidential events in a row over his renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Leavitt revealed the move at a daily briefing, saying that the WHCA had for “long…
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