FAFO, Associated Press style.
The White House won a temporary victory yesterday in the lawsuit brought by the AP over their exclusion from the briefing room and Air Force One. The judge in the case declined to issue a temporary restraining order, but seemed inclined to think that the AP would prevail on the merits. Judge Trevor McFadden questioned whether the Trump administration had conducted viewpoint discrimination, suggesting that the AP would win at trial. McFadden also noted pointedly that the White House allowed the White House Correspondents Association authority to grant credentials and access to the media spaces:
The White House Correspondents’ Association, a private group, has long determined who would serve in the press pool, the smaller team of reporters who cover the president in the Oval Office and other areas where space is limited.
The judge noted that the “White House has accepted the WHCA’s ability to be the referee here,” adding that by singling out the AP over the Gulf of Mexico reference, “That seems to be problematic.”
Thus, anyone with a pulse could have guessed what would happen before the hearing on the merits scheduled for March 3. The White House put an end to WHCA’s control of the media spaces and took over credentialing themselves:
Fresh of a legal victory allowing it to ban the Associated Press from White House events, the Trump White House announced on Tuesday that the administration — not an independent group of journalists — will determine which outlets have access to the president as part of a pool allowed into the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and into otherwise closed meetings and events.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the changes in the briefing room on Tuesday, asserting that the White House Correspondents’ Association “should no longer have a monopoly” on organizing pools and that the White House would determine the makeup of the pool on a day-to-day basis.
That’s both a legal strategy and a media strategy. Both fit within Trump’s temperament too, plus will undoubtedly go over well with his base.
Legally, that moots an important argument from the AP as well as the WHCA in this challenge to the administration’s exclusion. It might not be entirely enough for McFadden to toss out the case, though, because of the declared point of the exclusion. Courts tend to take a dim view of viewpoint-based decisions by government, and not for bad reasons either. However, this might give the White House press office an opportunity to withdraw the specific exclusion, which would make this challenge entirely moot … and then simply decide to keep rejecting the AP’s credential applications in the future without stating why.
Is this wise, though? It will certainly infuriate the media and theoretically would color their coverage, but the American news industry has already been on full-tilt negative coverage of Trump for the last several years. After amplifying Democrats’ shrieking hysteria about Donald Trump being a Nazifasciststinkybottom, especially since the general election with very little moderation since, the White House probably figures they have nothing much to lose in a media feud that the media itself perpetuates.
In years past, one might have been inclined to defend the WHCA arrangement as necessary for the independence of media covering the president and administration. That has long since been eclipsed, in particular in how the “independent” media never questioned Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline or the cover-up surrounding it. That alone negates any claim that the WHCA would have to a moral high ground, let alone the absurdly negative and hysterical tone of the coverage of Trump.
[more to come]
