The White House has banned The Associated Press from the pool of reporters allowed inside the Oval Office due to its stance over the “Gulf of America.”
Reporters from the AP were not allowed in the Oval Office to cover an executive order signing with President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move from the White House, saying it’s a “privilege to cover the White House.”
“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt said.
The AP has said it was blocked from covering two White House events due to its refusal to “align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.”
The AP, which provides the style guide for a number of other news outlets around the country, has issued a statement on Trump’s renaming of the body of water, noting that it would refer to the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”
Reporters asked Leavitt on Wednesday if the response to the stance from the AP should be viewed as the Trump administration retaliating against the news organization or if it was in direct conflict with Trump’s alleged First Amendment stances.
“If we feel there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable,” the press secretary responded. “And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.”
After it was reported that the AP was stopped from covering certain White House events, several press freedom groups have pushed back, including the White House Correspondents’ Association.
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“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” the WHCA said in a statement. “The move by the administration to bar a reporter from The Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable.”
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