The Associated Press on Wednesday accused the White House of violating the First Amendment and called on the Trump administration to stop blocking reporters from news outlets.
In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wills, Associated Press, Executive Editor Julie Pace, said the White House blocked AP journalists at two news events with President Trump on Tuesday. Evening press event in an oval office and diplomacy office.
Pace restricts access to news organizations' elliptical offices if White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt previously told AP reporter. He said he told him he would be doing so. Gulf of Mexico. On his first day in office, Trump ordered US authorities to make changes to the official map by executive order.
“The actions taken by the White House were clearly intended to punish the Associated Press for the content of the speech,” Pace wrote in the letter. “It is one of the most fundamental doctrines of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say. This is the editorial choice of news organizations and , discrimination from the perspective based on a clear violation of the first amendment.”
Pace said the AP is ready to “fiercely defend its constitutional rights.”
The AP has issued editorial guidance on changes in geographical names, explaining that Trump's executive order would continue to call the waters the Gulf of Mexico because it had only authority within the US and was granted by Mexico. But the outlet said it would refer to Mount McKinley, Alaska's peak, Denali, as the change Trump declared in the same order.
On the podium at the White House Briefing Room on Wednesday, reporter Caroline Leavitt spoke about the administration's commitment to the First Amendment, claiming that the administration is within its right to elect the Associated Press.
“It's a privilege to cover this White House,” she says, calling her role a privilege too. “No one has the right to go to an oval office and ask the president of the United States.”
She added that other qualified reporters are not part of the press pool, “We reserve the right to decide who can enter the oval office.”
I was asked if there was a standard set for how news outlets would be dealt with if they didn't use “American Bay,” she didn't answer directly, but she said it was clear. I did. In this room we intend to hold those lies accountable. “She claims that “American Bay” is the name of the waters, and says she doesn't understand why some press are not using it.
Another AP reporter was blocked from an oval office event later Wednesday, according to an AP spokesman. Executive editor Pace added in a statement that the outlet “is deeply concerned that the White House continues to block Associated Press reporters from working to cover the president.”
Freedom for First Amendment supporters and reporter groups strongly opposed the Trump administration's move on Tuesday. Timothy Richardson, director of the Penn America's Journalism and Disinformation Program, is a free-expression nonprofit that calls “retaliation, simple, simple, shameful attempt to bully the press with ideological compliance.” I've come.
In a statement Tuesday, the White House Correspondents Eugene Daniels said the White House “cannot decide how news organizations report news and are unhappy with the editor's decisions, and is therefore working journalists. “We should not punish them either.”
New York Times spokesman Charlie Statlander said in a statement Wednesday:
