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      US judge allows Trump’s AP Oval Office ban to stand over Gulf of Mexico name

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      A federal judge on Monday denied a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore full access to presidential events for the news agency’s journalists.The US district judge Trevor McFadden declined to grant the AP’s request for a temporary injunction restoring its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House. The Trump administration barred the outlet earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the restriction on “more private areas” used by Trump was different from prior instances in which courts have blocked government officials from revoking access to journalists.“I can’t say the AP has shown a likelihood of success here,” McFadden said.But he also described the ban as “problematic” and advised the government that “case law in this circuit is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”. McFadden said the issue required more exploration before ruling. Another hearing in the case has been set for next month.The AP filed a lawsuit over the ban last week, in which it named three senior Trump aides and argued that the decision to block its reporters from certain locations violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.“The constitution prevents the president of the United States or any other government official from coercing journalists or anyone else into using official government vocabulary to report the news,” Charles Tobin, a lawyer for the AP, said during a court hearing.The outlet’s attorneys argued the AP would face “irreparable harm” if the ban was not immediately lifted.Trump administration lawyers argued in a court filing before the hearing that the AP does not have a constitutional right to what they called “special media access to the president”.Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called the AP lawsuit a “blatant PR stunt” while Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said: “We feel we are in the right in this position.”Leavitt is one of the three White House officials named as defendants in the lawsuit. The other two, Susan Wiles, the chief of staff, and Taylor Budowich, the deputy chief of staff, have not responded to requests for comment.Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.The AP said in January it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.The White House banned AP reporters in response, preventing the AP’s journalists from seeing and hearing Trump and other top White House officials as they take newsworthy actions or respond in real time to news events.“We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America,” Trump said last week.The White House Correspondents’ Association said in a legal brief backing the AP in the case that the ban “will chill and distort news coverage of the president to the public’s detriment”.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Lester Holt to exit NBC Nightly News as MSNBC cuts Ayman Mohyeldin’s show

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      NBC’s Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of its Nightly News show, and MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin is stepping down from a similar role at his namesake weekend evening show as the liberal networks’ owners continue a major programming shake-up on Monday.Others at MSNBC affected by changes revealed on Monday include Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart, the New York Post reported.Holt, who has served as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for a decade, is leaving the broadcast early this summer, the network reported.A successor for Holt on the program is yet to be named. He will reportedly continue to work with NBC, which shares an owner with MSNBC, as the principal anchor at Dateline, a role he has held for nearly 15 years.At the same time, staff of Mohyeldin’s show, named Ayman, learned on Monday that the last episode of Ayman is likely to air on 20 April. Another source at the network said Mohyeldin would anchor a new program yet to be announced.The New York Post reported learning that Phang and Capehart’s shows were also being canceled but would remain at the network. The plan is for Capehart, like Mohyeldin, to host a new show, and Phang would continue as a legal correspondent.In a recording of a meeting about the cancellation of Mohyeldin’s show, an MSNBC official said the network was “making several changes to our programming lineup”.The official subsequently said that the network had “hit success” with ensemble shows and was looking to invest in shows with the ensemble format in order to meet “audience needs”.Those remarks came a day after news broke that MSNBC had canceled the longstanding anchor Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut. The network plans to replace Reid’s show with a new one led by three co-anchors: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele, who have been co-hosting MSNBC’s The Weekend Show.Mohyeldin has hosted several shows at MSNBC, including Morning Joe First Look, an early morning pre-show for one of the network’s flagship shows. In 2021, his namesake show was given a prime-time weekend evening slot.The anchor also served as a correspondent for NBC in Gaza during a monthlong conflict in 2014, receiving praise from media critics for reporting that departed from “the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage”.The changes affecting Reid and Mohyeldin result from a reshuffling by the network’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, who took over the role in February.Kutler, who was previously MSNBC’s senior vice-president for content strategy, succeeds the former MSNBC president Rashida Jones.According to a statement given to the Guardian by MSNBC, the network will also introduce a new trio of co-hosts to anchor a morning and evening edition of The Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays at 7am and 6pm ET.Jonathan Capehart, an MSNBC host and Washington Post associate editor, will serve as one co-anchor of the morning edition.Mohyeldin will serve as anchor of a different group on the evening addition. Ali Velshi will also expand his namesake program, Velshi, to three hours on the weekends.MSNBC confirmed that Joy Reid will be leaving the network. Rotating anchors will host the hour in the coming weeks.The network also confirms that it will sunset its broadcasting operation in Miami. This affects the Miami-based shows José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.According to a source, the entire staff of The ReidOut, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show are being let go. Staff will be given the option to reapply for a job on one of the shows or take severance and quit. They have six weeks to decide which option to take, the source said.That source added that the changes are due in part to MSNBC no longer wanting to use Telemundo, the Spanish-language network that is headquartered in Miami.In November last year, the Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski faced backlash after meeting with Trump to discuss “a new approach” after his election in November to a second presidency.Also in November, Comcast announced plans to spin off several cable networks, including MSNBC, as the TV networks faced declining ratings, which only further declined following election fatigue.Chuck Todd, a prominent anchor and former host of Meet The Press, announced in January that he was leaving NBC, another Comcast company, after 18 years. The announcement followed Todd’s pushback against NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chairperson during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in March 2024. McDaniel was eventually removed from her position.Trump, who has previously described news media as “the enemy of the people”. celebrated the cancelation of Reid’s show on his platform Truth Social, saying she should have been “canned long ago”. More

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      The ‘Gulf of America’ feud is about something bigger: Trump wants to control the media | Margaret Sullivan

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      It might seem like a small matter, just a disagreement over whether a body of water should be called one name or another.But it’s really about much bigger things: Trump-style intimidation, a clear violation of the first amendment – and the extent to which news organizations will stick together in each other’s defense, or will comply with the powerful for the sake of their own access.Even more broadly, it is about Donald Trump’s wide-ranging effort to control the media and be able to spread propaganda and interfere with the flow of accurate information.The disagreement started soon after the president decided unilaterally that the Gulf of Mexico was to be called the Gulf of America. The executive order was one more display of Trump’s capricious and imperious way of doing things; his first month has been a relentless exercise in chaos and norm-destruction.After the Associated Press, the global news organization, decided to stick with using the long-established name which makes sense to its international readership, the Trump White House determined that punishment was in order.An AP reporter was barred from a White House press event, and since then, things have only escalated. More AP reporters barred from briefings and from the president’s plane. Access denied.What’s happening is ugly. In the US, the government doesn’t get to dictate the language journalists use in their stories. There’s a little thing called the first amendment to the US constitution that prohibits this. But the Trump administration, as usual, has its own – often unconstitutional and sometimes illegal – ideas.The actions against the AP are “retribution, plain and simple, and a shameful attempt to bully the press into ideological compliance”, said Tim Richardson of PEN America.On Thursday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to the White House signed by 30 news organizations, and the White House Correspondents Association is similarly registering its displeasure.But letters – even signed by many and ever so strongly worded – are easy to ignore. The solution, if there is one, will require more forceful measures: lawsuits and journalistic solidarity that might include a widespread boycotting of White House press briefings.After all, compliance is a slippery slope. What happens, for example, when Trump proclaims that Ukraine is no longer Ukraine, but to be simply called Russia? Do news organizations politely accept the rewriting of history?“What do the media do then,” queried the longtime environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, “agree to those terms so they can stay in the briefing room?”Why stop there? How about declaring by fiat that the Washington monument is now to be called the Trump monument? Why not chisel another presidential face onto Mount Rushmore and call it Mount Donald?The great renaming has begun, and George Orwell would understand exactly what’s going on.A few days ago, a media leader I admire – Jim Friedlich, the CEO of the Lenfest Institute, a non-profit organization that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer – proposed a notion that deserves serious consideration. There should be, he wrote, a “NATO for News,” in which every legitimate news organization formally pledges to defend the others. This happens now, from time to time, but Friedlich has something more deliberate in mind, he wrote in the Inquirer.All of this is happening within a larger and quite alarming anti-press context.Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk recently fantasized about a “long prison sentence” for journalists on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which has been under fire for its (normal and conventional) editing of a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.Trump has sued the Pulitzer prize board for statements in defense of its awards to the Washington Post and the New York Times for their coverage of Trump’s relationship with Russia; he’s sued the Des Moines Register over a pre-election public opinion poll. And the Pentagon recently tossed eight traditional news organizations from office spaces to make room for pro-Maga outlets.“The Trump administration has decided that it will actively wield access as a tool to reshape the media landscape in its favor,” Oliver Darcy wrote in his media newsletter, Status. It surely will also use more legal threats and actions.Given that we’re only a month into this brave new world, some unity and stiff-spined resolve are very much in order.That won’t be easy. Getting journalists together is like herding pigeons. And no journalist wants to lose access to sources and to being where news is made. But in this era, it couldn’t be more important to push back hard.The free press may be going down, but if so, we should go down swinging.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      ‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes

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      Bigger than the Super Bowl, claimed Donald Trump, sitting in a big leather chair beside a big map. Then came an announcement over the public address system. “Air Force One is currently in international waters,” declared the flight crew of the US presidential jet, “for the first time in history flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America.”As his aides clapped and whooped, Trump gloated: “Isn’t that nice? We’re about ‘Make America Great Again’, right? That’s what we care about.” He proceeded to sign a proclamation declaring 9 February “Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water previously known as the Gulf of Mexico.It was classic Trumpian showmanship from the highest perch in the world. It was also the latest salvo by the 47th president and his allies to control language, influence media narratives and reshape cultural institutions in ways that some compare with the Soviet Union or other authoritarian regimes from history.Long a master of branding, Trump is making propaganda a core element of his strongman presidency. This comes as little surprise to critics who regard it as an extension of last year’s election campaign in which he sold himself as a champion of the forgotten people and victim of a weaponised justice department.Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump’s re-election is the greatest, most successful propaganda op in history. Propaganda is why Donald Trump is president again and they know this, which is why they undermined the press, expertise and science.”Since taking office, Trump has outpaced his predecessors by signing 64 executive orders and 27 memos and proclamations in less than a month. His blitz on immigration, trade and the federal bureaucracy was expected. But the president’s aggressive approach to reshaping national identity through symbolism and language has taken opponents by surprise.When Trump used his inaugural address to assert his vision of US dominance by promising to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton burst out laughing. But the switch came with a sinister edge.This week, the White House banned the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, because it has not changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (the AP serves numerous countries that do not recognise the new name). The punitive measure prompted CNN to invoke “newspeak” from George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which language is a tool of control and can be narrowed to limit thought.In a similar vein, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, signed an order restoring the name of a special operations forces base in North Carolina back to Fort Bragg, reversing a Joe Biden effort in 2023 to remove names that honored Confederate leaders (Hegseth swerved past that association by this time recognising Roland Bragg, an obscure veteran of the second world war).The White House is also redefining terms to cast opponents in a negative light – for example, by referring to fired federal employees as “deep-state activists”. The National Park Service erased references to transgender people on its webpage for the Stonewall national monument.As the AP discovered, the media – long derided by Trump as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” – is now subject to a system of rewards and punishments. The owners of the Washington Post and major social media platforms such as Facebook and X had the best seats in the house at his inauguration.At least 10 of the 18 reporters that the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called on during her briefing this week work for partisan rightwing outlets. Officials at the Pentagon decided to “rotate” eight major news outlets from their workspaces, replacing them with more Trump-friendly media, and invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to take part in Hegseth’s first trip overseas.In addition, Trump is pursuing lawsuits against media outlets by using novel legal theories to circumvent established first amendment protections, while his allies are using the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to target broadcast news networks whose content they deem unfavorable.View image in fullscreenThere are concerns that the intimidatory tactics are working. Setmayer, who now leads the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee, said: “The mainstream American media has failed. What is happening is not a normal transition; it’s a constitutional crisis. That’s the way the American media should be covering this and they’re not.“They’re parsing their words. They’re whitewashing and sanewashing what Elon Musk has been allowed to do and what Donald Trump is telegraphing he plans to do more of. They’ve made a business decision to obey in advance. It’s not an accident that Trump went after the FCC licenses and sued these media conglomerates for them to bend their knees to him, so they won’t cover him honestly.”Trump is also making a surprise foray into arts and culture with a hostile takeover of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, a living memorial for the 35th president that, with a $268m budget last year, hosts classical music, dance, hip-hop, opera, theatre, touring productions and educational arts programming.Trump has installed himself as chair, stacked the board of trustees with his loyalists and replaced president Deborah Rutter with his former acting director of national intelligence, Ric Grenell, a disrupter who has no prior experience in arts administration.“We know the importance of the arts in telling stories and keeping the truth out there and in being part of the resistance, so it is no accident that Trump is coming for the arts, similar to other fascists in history,” Setmayer said.The president admitted he has not been to the Kennedy Center but felt the overhaul was necessary because of drag shows that are “specifically targeting our youth” as well as other “anti-American propaganda”. He told reporters: “We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.” In response, several stars have dissociated themselves from the centre.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the same time, the National Endowment for the Arts, the biggest national funder of the arts and arts education with a budget of $207m in 2024, has cancelled grants aimed at marginalised groups and posted updated guidelines stating that grant recipients should “not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)’” or “use federal funds to promote gender ideology”.The changes fueled concerns about the politicisation of the arts, with critics pointing to examples of dictators in history who suppressed and censored artists.Olivia Troye, a former adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence, said: “There’s a lot of things I expected from Trump, having worked with his circle of people, but I have to say that it was striking to me when he decided to insert himself and take over the Kennedy Center because that to me was a sign that it is him wanting to fully control all narratives.”Trump is exhibiting an authoritarian streak and seeking to curb dissent, Troye added: “The arts is a significant pillar of watching what happens in nations that are facing the potential failing of their democracy and that’s concerning. People need to be paying attention to these types of thing.”“They may seem frivolous: why do I care what he did to the Kennedy Center? Well, let’s look at the history. Who has ever done that as president? Why is he doing that? It’s all part of the overarching effort by this individual who wants to control every narrative there is.”Like past authoritarians, Trump understands the power of symbols such as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, which is carved with the faces of former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida proposed legislation adding Trump to the monument, explaining: “President Trump’s bold leadership and steadfast dedication to America’s greatness have cemented his place in history.”Trump has issued an order to revive a “National Garden of American Heroes”, an attempt to curate a version of history that reinforces ideas of national exceptionalism. The representative Buddy Carter of Georgia has introduced a bill to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”, as Trumpseeks to acquire the island territory.Trump has also called for “patriotic education”, attempting to control what is taught in schools and instil a conservative vision. The administration is pushing to restrict what teachers can teach about gender and race and has threatened to withhold funds from schools that fail to comply.Above all, the 47th president is dominating the nation’s attention, filling news cycles and social media 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Last Sunday, he became the first sitting US president to attend the Super Bowl, the crown jewel of US sport, which drew a record 127 million viewers and “a Caesar-at-the-Colosseum air,” according to New York Times critic James Poniewozik.Then, when Trump hosted ally Elon Musk and his son X in the Oval Office, there was saturation coverage. White House communications director Steven Cheung tweeted an image of eight news networks simultaneously broadcasting the meeting and boasted: “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”Reed Galen, president of the Union, a pro-democracy coalition, said: “With dictators throughout history, it’s all spectacle. The idea of propaganda is not necessarily to lie about things but to keep the attention focused where you want it, and he’s a master of that.”Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history and Italian studies professor at New York University and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, describes Trump as “one of the most successful propagandists in all of history”, as skilled as the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in his use of images, symbols and repetition.She said: “The cult of personality is that you must be omnipotent but you’re also omnipresent, you’re everywhere. It’s not just old-school dictatorships like North Korea today or communist China where the face of the leader is everywhere.“Nowadays, for example, Modi in India is the most followed leader in the world. He’s a genius at Instagram. When he ran for office in 2014, he used holograms so he could be in a hundred places at the same time. Being everywhere and inescapable is part of making the population depend on you and on no one else.” More

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      in US Politics

      White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued Gulf dispute

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      The White House has announced that it is indefinitely blocking Associated Press journalists from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One amid a growing standoff between Donald Trump’s administration and the news agency over the Gulf of Mexico’s name.White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich made the announcement on X, saying: “The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America. This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’s commitment to misinformation.”Budowich went on to accuse the 175-year-old news wire agency – whose style guidance is used by thousands of journalists and writers globally – of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting”.Budowich said he recognized that the Associated Press’s reporting is covered by the US constitution’s first amendment, which provides for the freedoms of speech and press. But he maintained that “does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One”.He added that Associated Press journalists and photographers would retain their credentials to the White House complex.According to the Hill, an Associated Press journalist was barred from attending an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon following the White House’s announcement.The outlet reports that a White House official told the Associated Press journalist, “No, sorry,” when the reporter tried to join the event.Friday’s announcement from the White House marks an escalation in the growing feud between the Trump administration and the Associated Press over the organization’s refusal to abide by Trump’s preference for Gulf of America and change its style on that body of water to Gulf of America.On Tuesday, the Associated Press said another one of its journalists was refused entry into an executive order signing ceremony at the Oval Office – a move described by the news agency’s executive editor Julie Pace as an attempt by the White House to “punish” the organization for its independent journalism.“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,” Pace said.After Tuesday’s episode, Pace sent a letter to the White House, calling the White House’s decision an “alarming precedent”.A separate statement from the New York Times said it stood by the Associated Press while “condemning repeated acts of retribution by this administration for editorial decisions it disagrees with”.“Any move to limit access or impede reporters doing their jobs is at odds with the press freedoms enshrined in the constitution,” said the statement, which was reported by chief CNN media analyst Brian Stelter.According to a 23 January style memo, the Associated Press said that it would not be changing its style on the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America after Trump’s decision to change the body of water’s name – a move which holds authority only within the US’s federal government.“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” the Associated Press said.Blocking the Associated Press’s access around Trump could substantially affect news consumption in certain markets.The Associated Press provides reporting to a numerous publications across the US that do not have their own reporters covering the White House.Supporters of Trump could also use the White House’s decision to limit access for Associated Press journalists as evidence for bad-faith arguments that the organization is unpatriotic or untrustworthy. More

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      AP excoriates White House barring of reporters as ‘alarming precedent’

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      The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”.“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.“The issue here is free speech – a fundamental pillar of American democracy and a value of the utmost importance to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, occupation or industry.”Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.The Associated Press said in a January style guide update that they would continuing referring to the body of water that borders both the US and Mexico “by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.The agency stated that Trump’s order to change the name only carried authority within the US, and that other countries including Mexico did not have to recognize the name change.“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” the AP wrote, adding that “as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences”.Pace said that during a meeting on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, informed an AP reporter that AP’s access to the “Oval Office would be restricted if AP did not immediately align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order”.When AP did not accede to the demands, Pace said, White House staff blocked an AP reporter from attending an executive order signing at the Oval Office and, later, another AP reporter from attending a press event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech,” Pace wrote. “It is among the most basic tenets for the First Amendment that government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say.”She added: “This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”Pace said that as of Wednesday, it was not clear whether the White House intended to impose these access restrictions against AP reporters on an ongoing basis, and urged the administration to “end this practice”.The “fundamental role of the press is to serve as the public’s eyes and ears”, she said, adding that “when journalists are blocked from doing their job, it is the American public who suffers”.It also sets an “alarming precedent”, she said, that has the potential to affect every news outlet and, in turn, “severely limit the public’s right to know what is happening inside their government”.The AP, she wrote, is “prepared to vigorously defend its constitutional rights and protest the infringement on the public’s right to independent news coverage of their government and elected officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Wednesday, Leavitt was asked which White House official made the decision to bar the AP reporters from the events.Leavitt said: “It is a privilege to cover this White House” and “nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt told the press briefing room.“If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.“It is very important to this administration that we get that right,” she added.The Guardian has contacted the White House for additional comment. More

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      Associated Press barred from Oval Office for not using ‘Gulf of America’

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      The Associated Press said it was barred from sending a reporter to Tuesday’s Oval Office executive order signing in an effort to “punish” the agency for its style guidance on upholding the use of the name of the Gulf of Mexico, in lieu of Donald Trump’s preferred name for the geographic landmark as the Gulf of America.AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace, said in a statement: “As a global news organization, The Associated Press informs billions of people around the world every day with factual, nonpartisan journalism.”“Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.”Pace continued: “It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. 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.”Aaron Terr, of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), called the move “an alarming attack on press freedom”.“The role of our free press is to hold those in power accountable, not to act as their mouthpiece. Any government efforts to erode this fundamental freedom deserve condemnation,” Terr said.The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) protested the decision in a statement posted on social media.“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,” said Eugene Daniels, WHCA president. “The move by the administration to bar a reporter from the Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable.”The order signing in the Oval Office ultimately became a question-and-answer session with the president and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man tasked by Trump with overhauling the US government. When asked about those who have called Musk’s anti-government efforts a “hostile takeover” of the executive branch, Musk said: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.”Shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to rename both the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, the highest peak in North America. Per his order, the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali will revert to Mount McKinley – the name it was called before Barack Obama changed it in 2015.At the time, the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, jokingly suggested that North America, including the United States, should be renamed Mexican America as it had been in the 17th century.A few days later, the AP rolled out their style guidance on Trump’s order, noting that the organisation “will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”. The AP said that’s because the gulf has carried the Gulf of Mexico name for “more than 400 years” and that other countries and international bodies do not have to recognize the name change.That’s not the case for Mount McKinley, whose name Trump changed from its former name of Denali. Because the area of the Alaskan mountain “lies solely in the United States” and Trump has full authority to change the name, the AP said, it will use the name Mount McKinley.The AP’s style is not only used by the agency, but by thousands of journalists and writers globally.Most news organizations, including Reuters, call it the Gulf of Mexico although, where relevant, Reuters style is to include the context about Trump’s executive order.The AP’s move was a stark departure from other major organisations, including Google, which has since confirmed and renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on Google Maps in the US.The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements by the WHCA and the AP. Mexico’s foreign ministry also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. More

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      Fox Acquires Firm Behind Conservative and True Crime Podcasts

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      Tucker Carlson, Nancy Grace, Megyn Kelly and Piers Morgan are among the clients of Red Seat Ventures, which now joins Rupert Murdoch’s empire.The Fox Corporation said on Monday that it had acquired Red Seat Ventures, a growing digital media company that has become a go-to partner for old-media stars like Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan as they create their own independent online programming.Red Seat and its founding partners, the brothers Chris and Kevin Balfe, will continue to operate independently within Fox’s Tubi Media Group, an arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire focused on digital and streaming ventures. A purchase price was not disclosed.The acquisition moves the Fox Corporation into the heart of the online “creator economy,” where media personalities who once relied on old-school corporate distributors — like, say, the cable networks owned by Fox — have struck out on their own to build podcasts and streaming shows that rack up millions of subscribers on platforms like YouTube and SiriusXM.Red Seat’s lengthy client list includes Dr. Phil, Nancy Grace, Bill O’Reilly, the former “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen and the “President’s Daily Brief” podcast. Last month, The New York Post, which is also owned by Mr. Murdoch, retained Red Seat to develop a new daily podcast and audio division for the newspaper.The deal means that Mr. Carlson and Mr. O’Reilly — former Fox News stars who both lost their shows — will once again be tied to the Murdoch universe, albeit at a remove. (The same goes for Ms. Kelly, who rose to fame on Fox News before leaving for NBC in 2017.) Because Red Seat is only a service provider, none of the three will be paid by Fox or report to its executives. In addition, Tubi Media and Fox News are housed in separate divisions of the Fox Corporation.Red Seat, founded a decade ago, has about 80 full-time employees and is based out of a loft space in the NoMad district of Manhattan, a neighborhood popular with tech start-ups. Among its most popular podcasts are those of Mr. Carlson and Ms. Kelly, which routinely rank near the top of Apple’s podcast charts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More