The White House excluded several
major US news organisations, including some it has criticised, from an
off-camera briefing held by the White House press secretary on Friday.
Reporters for CNN, The New York
Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed were not allowed into the
session in the office of press secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer’s off-camera briefing, or “gaggle,”
replaced the usual televised daily news briefing in the White House briefing
room. He did not say why those particular news organisations were excluded, a
decision which drew strong protests.
Reuters was included in the
session, along with about 10 other news organisations, including Bloomberg and
CBS.
President Donald Trump has
regularly attacked the media and at a gathering of conservative
activists on Friday he criticized news organisations that he said provide “fake
news”, calling them the “enemy” of the American people.
Spicer said his team decided to
have a gaggle in his office on Friday instead of a full briefing in the larger
White House briefing room and argued that “we don’t need to do everything on
camera every day.”
Reporters at the Associated Press
and Time magazine walked out of the briefing when hearing that others had been
barred from the session.
Off-camera gaggles are not
unusual. The White House often invites handpicked outlets in for briefings,
typically for specific topics. But briefings and gaggles in the White House are
usually open to all outlets and they are free to ask anything.
A pool reporter from Hearst
Newspapers was included in the gaggle on Friday and gave full details to the
entire press corps. Media outlets allowed into the gaggle also shared their
audio with others.
Journalists leave after several
major news organizations including CNN, The New York Times and Politico were
excluded from an off camera "gaggle" meeting with White House Press
Secretary Sean Spicer in his office that was held in place of the regular daily
press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 24, 2017.
(Reuters)
Spicer’s decision drew a sharp
response from some of the media outlets that were excluded.
“Nothing like this has ever
happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple
administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New
York Times, said in a statement.
“We strongly protest the
exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media
access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”
The White House Correspondents
Association, or WHCA, also protested.
“The WHCA board is protesting
strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” said
Jeff Mason, president of the association and a Reuters reporter.
During the election campaign last
year, Trump’s team banned a few news organisations, including The Washington
Post and BuzzFeed, from covering his campaign rallies for a period of time to
protest their coverage.
CNN posted a Twitter message on
Friday afternoon saying: “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump
White House. Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they
don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.”
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of
BuzzFeed News, said in a statement: “While we strongly object to the White
House’s apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not
like, we won’t let these latest antics distract us from continuing to cover
this administration fairly and aggressively.”
On Friday, Spicer said the White
House plans to fight against what it says is unfair coverage.
“I think we’re going to
aggressively push back,” he said. “We’re just not going to sit back and let
false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there.”
No comments
Post a Comment