Reporters are no longer going to have free in White House, unrestricted access to an office in the West Wing, run by the communications staff. The Trump administration said in their memo on U.S press wire, Friday, that they would put restrictions on the office as its latest move following the press corps.
According to Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, and Steve Cheung, the Communications Director, in their memo released on Friday, the road of unfettered access to the office is no longer available to the reporters seeking to approach the white house officials in the office.
However, the White House argued that the decision was based on “recent structural changes” necessitating that communications employees handle executive matters related to the National Security Council. “Members of the White House Communications Staff in this role are regularly handling sensitive material,” the memo stated.
However, these changes seem unlikely to be merely a matter of staff safety precautions. The initiation reflects White House restrictions on reporters, which have included excluding certain news outlets from closed briefings and events.
Moreover, new guidelines and limitations were issued at the Pentagon, which forced the majority of reporters employed there to return their media IDs in order to work from a location outside the main Pentagon building.
President Donald Trump has suggested the alternative of relocating the press corps from the White House site. “We have an opportunity here. We could move them very easily across the street,” Trump urged, and his wish has come true. “But given that they do their job very well,” the President justifies, “it is not necessary to carry out this scenario”.
According to the new restrictions, the news and the whistle-blower reporters will keep historical access to a separate workplace beside the briefing room, occupied by the low-level communications unit. White House Correspondents’ Association head Weijia Jiang expressed discontent with the President’s innovation.
“Placing limits on the amount of time subjects can call for reporters restricts the press corps’s capacity to challenge officials, promote visibility, and be held responsible, ultimately to the detriment of the American people,” Jiang remarked.
In her address to the press, Cheung wrote that White House reporters have covertly taken video and audio recordings of the White House’s business office, entered non-public rooms in the edifice, and eavesdropped on the president’s private talks.
Earlier this year, President Trump’s White House tried to bar the Associated Press from White House events after the news organization refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” after Trump signed an executive order to change its name.
A federal judge said the White House could not legally prohibit AP from White House events, but the news organization’s access remains limited as the White House pursues an appeal. Trump has also independently sued news organizations he believes have improperly reported on him and his Republican supporters.
When President Bill Clinton entered the White House in 1993, the reporters were also banned in that part of the West Wing, referred to as the upper press. However, more recent White House organizations have permitted reporters to walk around to meet with members of the communications staff.
