White House spat with AP over ‘Gulf of America’ ignites fears for press freedom in second Trump era

A federal judge in the District Court of Columbia will shortly decide if the US president, Donald Trump, is allowed to dictate the terms of service of the Associated Press (AP), the US wire agency that proudly proclaims it is read by 4 billion people every day.

In a (typically for this administration) knee-jerk decision on February 11, White House officials informed AP that its journalists would be barred from entering restricted areas such as the Oval Office and Air Force One until it stops using the geographic term “Gulf of Mexico” – in contravention of an executive order renaming it the “Gulf of America”.

AP’s style guide explains that the Gulf of Mexico has carried this name for more than 400 years, and that Trump’s order only holds authority within the US. It notes that as a global news agency, it “must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences”.

But the style guide adds that, while AP will continue to refer to the body of water by its original name, it will do so “while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.

According to AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace: “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the first amendment” – which covers freedom of speech and the press.

In seeking to overturn the ban, AP brought a lawsuit (AP-v-Budowich-Complaint) against the White House chief of staff, Susan Wiles, the deputy chief of staff, Taylor Budowich, and its press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in their official capacities.

After a short hearing, Judge Trevor N. McFadden – who was appointed by Trump – declined to restore AP’s access immediately, and instead set another hearing date for March 20. According to the Washington Post, the judge was “not sufficiently convinced the situation was ‘dire’ enough to warrant such an intervention” – and therefore was “not inclined to act precipitously on the executive office of the president”.

Following this decision, the White House denied access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting on February 26 to an AP photographer, as well as reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Instead, officials allowed in cameras from ABC and Newsmax, plus reporters from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg and NPR.

Pick and mix

But can the president be allowed this pick-and-mix approach to access to the seat of power?

The White House press pool has been in place for more than a century, with the seating allocation in the press briefing room decided by the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association. As the major American news agency, AP has traditionally held the coveted middle front-row seat, which it still retains – even though senior officials have tweeted veiled threats to rescind AP’s entire White House credentials.

The press briefing room holds 49 seats, with some seats shared between two companies on rotation, and a few journalists or photographers permitted to stand in the aisles when there is room. Meanwhile, Air Force One (in reality, two Boeing 747s used on rotation) only has room for 13 people to represent the entire White House press corps. The pool on the plane is ordinarily made up of three agency reporters (AP, Reuters and Bloomberg), four photographers (including from AP), three network TV journalists, a radio reporter and two print reporters.

Trump has an ongoing fight against “legacy” news outlets that dominated coverage before the advent of the internet. These media often have strict editorial guidelines, but the president has regularly dismissed them as “fake news”. During the election campaign, he ignored well-known programmes such as CBS’s Sixty Minutes in favour of Joe Rogan’s podcast.

At the Pentagon, Trump’s new military brooms have also been sweeping legacy media companies out of their briefing rooms. This list includes NBC, the New York Times, Politico, CNN and The Washington Post. In their place will go Trump-friendly outlets such as Newsmax and the Washington Examiner.

‘Privilege, not a right’

Meanwhile, a petition by media companies is calling on the US government to “honor its commitment to freedom of expression” by upholding “a nonpartisan defense of a free press”. Included on this petition are the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute, and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Members of the press pool are usually the only reporters that get to throw questions at senior members of the administration. Its members follow the president on important trips both nationally and internationally. AP is a widely trusted non-profit news organisation, and its reports get syndicated to media organisations throughout the world, with any profits used to pay for its staff and its newsgathering.

The White House released a statement on February 24: “As we have said from the beginning, asking the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right.”

However, having an independent arbiter making decisions about press pool representation is surely preferable in maintaining a free press and accountability than allowing each administration to pick its own reporters – or even its own facts.

Colleen Murrell received funding from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán (2021-4) for research for the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland.