Trump Is Right on the White House Correspondents’ Association—and Speaker Johnson Should Follow Suit– freebeacon.com
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Excerpt:
It’s been a lousy week for the White House Correspondents’ Association. President Donald Trump cut the organization off at the knees when he announced on Tuesday that the White House, not the WHCA, would select the members of the presidential press pool, the rotating group of reporters and photographers who cover the president in places like the Oval Office and Air Force One where space is tight. Cue the hysterics.
The White House has always had the discretion to grant or deny reporters access to White House grounds and, once on those grounds, over which reporters are called on in press briefings. It stands to reason that the White House has the right to decide which outlets get access to tight space that the White House itself is providing.
But taking control of the press pool, the WHCA says, is an assault on the First Amendment. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president Eugene Daniels said Tuesday, shortly after announcing his departure from Politico for MSNBC. “For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”
