The White Home Correspondents’ Affiliation is fed up with President Donald Trump. On Monday, the group slammed studies that his administration is planning to take management of the briefing room’s seating chart—a blatant try and sideline journalists and stack the room with MAGA loyalists.
The WHCA, which has lengthy dealt with seating preparations—prioritizing main newspapers, TV networks, and wire companies—alerted members by way of e mail that the White Home is attempting to wrestle that energy away.
“If the White House pushes forward, it will become even more clear that the administration is seeking to cynically seize control of the system through which the independent press organizes itself, so that it is easier to exact punishment on outlets over their coverage,” the WHCA board wrote in a press release obtained by Politico.
The board went on to urge the administration to again down.
“The White House should abandon this wrong-headed effort and show the American people they’re not afraid to explain their policies and field questions from an independent media free from government control,” it stated.
A weekend report from Axios urged that the White Home could quickly rearrange the press briefing room’s seating chart to pack the entrance rows with far-right shops that not often problem Trump.
And this isn’t the primary time the Trump administration has tried to rewrite the principles.
In January, press secretary Karoline Leavitt rolled out a plan to usher in “new media voices,” making room for TikTok influencers, podcasters, and MAGA-friendly information personalities to get nearer to the president.
Then, in February, the White Home seized management of one other key WHCA perform: deciding which journalists get to be within the press pool masking Trump.
An nameless White Home official instructed Axios that the shake-up isn’t nearly boosting Trump’s media fan membership.
“It’s truly an honest look at consumption [of the outlets’ coverage]. Influencers are important, but it’s tough because they aren’t [equipped to provide] consistent coverage. So the ability to cover the White House is part of the metrics,” they stated.
Proper. And but, one way or the other, the most important media shops—those that truly considerably maintain Trump accountable—are those that can probably get pushed to the again of the room.
The drama doesn’t cease there. Over the weekend, the WHCA abruptly canceled comic Amber Ruffin’s scheduled look at its annual correspondents’ dinner after backlash from the Trump administration.
In the meantime, as conventional information organizations battle to cowl Trump’s newest media crackdown, the president is ramping up his conflict on the press.
HuffPost was briefly booted from the press pool, main wire companies have had their entry restricted, and The Related Press is suing the White Home for banning its journalists for refusing to check with the Gulf of Mexico because the “Gulf of America.”
In response, the WHCA inspired its members to put on “First Amendment” pins on the White Home and through TV appearances.
However Trump’s message is already loud and clear: If you happen to don’t bend the knee, you may not get a seat on the desk.
