The press corps, and profound losses ahead

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“In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

That’s the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Eugene Daniels, after the Trump administration moved on Tuesday to take control over the press pool. WHCA has, for decades, managed the rotation. On Wednesday, the WHCA told its members to stop using a listserv for shared reporting, and that it would no longer compile the news accounts.

The Trump administration’s hostile takeover of the press pool comes on the heels of its ban of The Associated Press from the pool earlier this month for using Gulf of Mexico rather than Gulf of America.

The AP, part of the White House pool since it began, filed a lawsuit on Feb. 21, calling the ban retaliatory and a violation of the First and Fifth amendments; the next hearing is March 20.

The White House’s first move after taking control of the press corps was to remove HuffPost and Reuters, the latter a news wire service like the AP. That leaves Bloomberg News as the only wire service still in the pool — for now, at least.

And while it’s understandable that most of us aren’t thinking about the presidential pool rotation on a day-to-day basis, we all benefit from it. The profound effects on political reporting for newsrooms everywhere will no doubt be felt in the days ahead.

In blatant prior restraint, judge orders takedown of opinion piece

On Feb. 18, a Mississippi judge ordered The Clarksdale Press Register to take down its editorial criticizing city officials after the City of Clarksdale alleged it was defamatory, without the news outlet having a chance to argue its case. After swift national backlash from First Amendment advocates (including here at Freedom of the Press Foundation), the city dropped its lawsuit. The judge vacated her order Wednesday, and the editorial was republished.

Other notable updates and incidents

• Nearly 80 outlets across 22 states under the Lee Enterprises umbrella were hit with a cyberattack on Feb. 3, causing major disruptions to online and print publishing. The media company has since told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the attack involved “unauthorized access to critical applications and the withdrawal of files” and that some products were still being restored.
• Media Matters for America settled with Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Feb. 10 over his investigation into the group’s 2023 reporting on pro-Nazi content on X, prompting major advertisers to rethink their relationship with the social media platform. A federal lawsuit between the media watchdog and the Texas attorney general is ongoing.
• In quashing a subpoena seeking documents and testimony from a TV docuseries produced by media conglomerate Paramount Global, a federal judge in New York reminded the plaintiffs, suing as part of a music copyright battle, to “keep reporter’s privilege in mind.”