News agencies

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares83 Views

    AP files amended complaint against White House over press pool ban

    by

    The Associated Press amended its complaint against the Trump administration on Monday, including in its epigraph a punchy quote from an anonymous White House adviser: “The AP and the White House Correspondents Association wanted to f–k around. Now it’s finding out time.”The unnamed White House adviser’s quote came about during an exchange on 25 February 2025 and was first reported by Axios last week.The Associated Press filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration on 21 February, after the White House restricted its journalists from attending presidential events.The decision by the White House came in response to the news agency’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following an executive order issued by Donald Trump that renamed the body of water in the US.The AP claims that the actions of the Trump administration violate both the first and fifth amendments of the US constitution and is an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech.The lawsuit names three White House officials as defendants: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, and chief of staff Susan Wiles.Last week, the federal judge overseeing the case, who was appointed by Trump, denied a request from AP to immediately restore full access to presidential events for its journalists.The judge acknowledged that existing case law “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”, described the White House’s ban on AP journalists as “problematic” and indicated that the issue needed more exploration before a ruling can be made.Trump administration lawyers have argued in court filings that the AP does not have a constitutional right to what they called “special media access to the president”.On Monday, the AP amended its complaint, nearly doubling the size of the document from 18 pages to 32, and once again asked the federal judge to reinstate its access to the press pool during specific presidential events.“As the DC Circuit has made clear, journalists’ ‘first amendment interest’ in access to the White House, at events both large and small, ‘undoubtedly qualifies as liberty which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment,’” the amended complaint states.“The AP’s liberty interest in access is rooted in the First Amendment’s free speech and press guarantees and its related protections for news gathering.”The AP also highlighted and cited recent and ongoing instances of AP journalists being denied access and pointed out the recent decision from the White House to take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Trump.The complaint states that “rather than heed this Court’s warning that precedent ‘is uniformly unhelpful’ to the government”, the White House has “instead retaliated against the AP further” by abandoning the press pool system and “again barring the AP from the very same spaces – both small and large – that are at issue in this lawsuit.”“The AP’s journalists are also banned from larger events – including press conferences with the President and other world leaders” it adds. “The AP’s journalists, despite signing up in advance, are turned away”, and the result is that “the AP’s press credentials now provide its journalists less access to the White House than the same press credentials provide to all other members of the White House press corps.”The next hearing in this case is scheduled for 20 March. More

    More stories

    • 188 Shares102 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ debacle is no joke – this is how authoritarians get started

      by

      Last week, the Associated Press sued White House officials for violating its free press rights by punishing the organization for defying Donald Trump’s executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”. Unfortunately, on Monday, a federal judge refused to immediately strike down the White House’s retaliatory treatment of the AP. But the case is far from over.Granting access to the White House on the suppressive conditions set by the Trump administration is a blow to the first amendment and the free press. If the retaliation against the AP is allowed to stand, more restrictions on the press are certain to follow, creating Kremlin-like conditions that will affect all Americans who might question, or be suspected of questioning, the Trump party line.This is why a seemingly trivial issue – what to call the Gulf – is freighted with importance. Trump’s renaming of the Gulf unmistakably delivers his “America first” message. He has every right to his message. But he doesn’t have the right to turn the press into his messenger.The controversy began on Trump’s first day back in office, when he issued a unilateral order that an international sea, known for centuries as the Gulf of Mexico, henceforth be named the Gulf of America. Certain organizations, such as Google, immediately complied by changing the Gulf’s name on Google Maps and redirecting searches for “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America”.However, the AP, along with several other news organizations, resisted. Noting that the Trump order had no effect outside the US, the AP made an editorial judgment that its status as an international reporting agency was best served by continuing to refer to the Gulf by the name known to global readers.The Trump administration retaliated by barring AP reporters from the press pool that covers media events at the White House or on Air Force One, and on Tuesday it went further, announcing it would determine which organizations had access to the pool – traditionally the job of the White House Correspondents’ Association. While limited seating capacity may give the White House some discretion about who gets to be in the press pool, the first amendment does not permit that discretion to be used to punish the press or to limit access to outlets favorable to Trump. As the AP stated in its complaint: “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government. The Constitution does not allow the government to control speech” by controlling access.As tempting as it is to follow Shakespeare in shrugging the shoulders at “what’s in a name,” we should turn to history to learn what follows when authoritarian leaders start out with seemingly harmless verbal imperialisms. One of the first actions Hitler took after seizing power in 1933 was to scrub streets and public spaces of names that reflected Jewish influence or Weimar republicanism in favor of tributes to National Socialism. Stalin celebrated his own greatness by changing Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd, to “Stalingrad”. Before Stalingrad, there was the switch from Petrograd to Leningrad. In today’s China, the name “Tibet” has disappeared from Chinese maps in favor of the Mandarin name, “Xizang”.It is hard to know how seriously to take Trump’s flagging of territorial, as well as verbal, imperialism. He has suggested the US reclaim the Panama Canal Zone, buy Greenland from Denmark, incorporate Canada as a 51st state, and take over the Gaza Strip for resort real estate development. Even if these are mere paper ambitions, the disdain Trump shows for international law is already doing irreparable harm.Appealing to his Maga base with the “America first” rhetoric in the Gulf, he is selling out Ukraine to Putin’s Russia in ways reminiscent of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Hitler in 1938 by ceding parts of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Ignoring this lesson of history – in Munich of all places – this month, JD Vance stopped short of endorsing the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party by name, but made clear that the Trump administration would be happy if Europe adopted the same anti-immigrant policies that Trump’s renaming of the Gulf signaled.The ripple effect of Trump commandeering global waters reaches beyond the sea to all Americans. His actions must be considered alongside his other executive orders on his first day back in office, declaring the arrival of immigrants at the southern border an “invasion” and suspending grants of asylum, no matter how dire the situation of refugees. When we let Trump scapegoat vulnerable immigrants for this country’s – and the world’s – problems, we are in fascist territory. That is why Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is no laughing matter. It expresses a level of disrespect for Mexico that could well be a precursor for how strongmen treat peoples whom they first strip of dignity. Substitute Jew, Catholic, Turk, Armenian, Arab, gay or transgender for Trump’s talk of an invasion of aliens across the Gulf, and you get the point.What the Gulf needs is not more nationalistic power grabs but international cooperation to tackle its most pressing problems – worsening pollution, rising sea levels from the climate crisis, intensifying hurricanes, crumbling infrastructure, and loss of shoreline and habitat. Far from squabbling over what to call the Gulf, the US and Mexico should recognize that no one owns the Gulf; it belongs to nature.In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet made her “what’s in a name” speech to declare love for Romeo even though he bore the family name of her family’s blood enemy. It didn’t turn out well for Juliet, and it won’t turn out well for us if we let Trump intimidate the AP because its editors had the courage to stand up to his bullying.

      Jeffrey Abramson is author of Minerva’s Owl: The Tradition of Western Political Thought. Jack E Davis is the author of The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2018. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      White House says it will decide which news outlets cover Trump

      by

      The White House said it will take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Donald Trump.“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Tuesday.The announcement came a day after the Trump administration won a temporary ruling allowing it to bar the Associated Press (AP) in retaliation for the outlet’s decision to resist Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an independent association made up of members of the media, traditionally coordinates rotating pool coverage of more than a dozen journalists allowed access to the president in smaller settings.Leavitt asserted that the WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” of press access at the White House and that “legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well”.After Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name, the AP said it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.In response, the White House banned AP journalists from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One, accusing the news agency of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting”.The US district judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, denied a request by the AP on Monday to restore its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.The news agency had argued that the decision to block its reporters 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.Leavitt celebrated the judge’s ruling and said the White House wants “more outlets and new outlets to cover the press pool”. “It’s beyond time the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025,” she added.In a statement, the WHCA said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, said.“For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government.“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” the group’s president, Bruce Brown, said in a statement. More

    • 188 Shares153 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump interview an ‘insult to Hispanic community’, ex-Univision head says

      by

      A former president of Univision condemned the Spanish-language US television network’s recent interview with Donald Trump as “propaganda” and an “insult to the Hispanic community”.“To call the Trump [interview] an interview is mistaken,” Joaquin Blaya told MSNBC. “It was not an interview as we understand [it] in the United States. It was basically a one-hour propaganda open space for former president Trump to say whatever he wanted to say.”The friendly interview was filmed at the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago home. Lingering controversy ensued, including a call from John Leguizamo, the actor and sometime Daily Show host, for a Univision boycott.Amid revelations that Univision canceled both ads bought by President Joe Biden (after announcing a surprise policy change) as well as an interview in which a White House official was scheduled to respond, a top network anchor resigned.Speaking to the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday, Blaya lamented “a drastic change for what have been the standards of Univision”.“When I created the Univision network news [in the 1980s], [it was] built on the principles of American broadcasting journalism, the ABC, CBS, NBC … we were trying to basically create a Spanish but American network,” Blaya said.“And I say that because there’s a big difference from our association in those days with the news that we’re seeing coming from Mexico.”Univision recently came under the control of Grupo Televisa, a Mexican company. In his interview, Trump, who famously clashed with the Univision anchor Jorge Ramos during the 2016 election, said of the new owners: “They like me.”Last week, Blaya told the Washington Post that the Univision interview failed to preserve a standard “separation of business and news”.“What I saw there was batting practice, someone dropping balls for him to hit out of the park,” Blaya said. “I think it was an embarrassment.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but dominates Republican primary polling, amid mounting warnings of the fascistic tone of his rhetoric.Speaking to MSNBC, Blaya said favourable Univision coverage of Trump’s anti-immigration views was “a real insult to the Hispanic community of this country”.He added: “And for those who understand the business, there is no doubt that in doing what they did, [it] had to be a corporate decision. That is not a decision that the local news director or the local general manager would have taken on [their] own.”According to the Post, the interview was “arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner”, who was also a senior White House adviser for the ex-president.The Post said the interview was also “attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company”.Latino voters have long leaned Democratic. This week, however, the polling firm Morning Consult noted that “Trump is gaining ground among key voter segments including Black, Hispanic and young Americans.” More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      ‘It’s not up to him’: how media outlets plan to sidestep any Trump ‘victory’ news

      by

      Newsrooms across the United States are bracing for a potentially volatile election night, after reports suggested that Donald Trump is planning to declare “victory” on Tuesday even before results from critical battleground states have been determined.
      The president’s reported intention to make a premature – and potentially false – victory speech by the end of Tuesday night, with large numbers of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, has provoked intense journalistic debate. TV channels would be under pressure to air such an event on grounds that it is “news”, while aware that it amounted to dangerous misinformation that could stir violence across the nation and undermine the democratic process.
      Such a clash of responsibilities would amount to a heady climax in the American media’s extremely vexed relationship with Trump over the past four years.
      Were Trump to try to stage such a “victory” stunt it would chime with the relentless doubt that he has sown for months around the election, with repeated false claims that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. His comments suggest that his aim is to create the illusion that the election is being stolen from him in states such as Pennsylvania where early results from in-person voting might favor Trump in a so-called “red mirage”, only for the balance to swing to Biden as absentee ballots are counted beyond election day.
      As Jake Tapper, chief Washington correspondent for CNN, pointed out, any premature claim of victory would be electorally meaningless, the equivalent of a football coach bragging about having won at half-time. “That’s not how it works and it’s not up to him,” Tapper said in a tweet.
      But it would still present media outlets with a classic Trump conundrum. How do you cover a presidential “victory” speech that is founded upon hot air yet has the potential to cause serious public discord?
      Vivian Schiller, a former president and CEO of National Public Radio who was also NBC News’s chief digital officer, said that news organizations have no excuse for being unprepared for such an eventuality. Headlines such as “Trump declares victory”, especially on social media, could “shape public opinion and become a weapon against truth and trust in the democratic process,” she told the Guardian.

      Schiller, who in her current role as executive director of Aspen Digital has co-written a 10-point plan for news rooms on how to cover a historically toxic election, proposed that TV channels should actively counter any Trump gambit. One technique would be to display a fixed on-screen banner reminding viewers that the votes are still being counted with no winner yet declared.
      “If Trump goes on for more than a minute or two with falsehoods, cut away from the live feed and have your reporters explain that elections are not ‘called’ by their contestants,” she said. “Explain why such a premature declaration of victory is both wrong and dangerous.”
      Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University, responded to the Axios story by calling on newsrooms to step up and meet the challenge. A premature Trump “victory” declaration would be the most important test yet of what he called the “fading maxim” that whatever the US president says is news.
      That maxim, Rosen said on Twitter, was “corroded beyond repair by its abuser”.
      Election night is also likely to present the social media giants with challenges, after they struggled to counter misinformation throughout the presidential election cycle.
      Late on Monday, Twitter and Facebook announced that they would flag posts from candidates who claim to have won the election before the votes have been counted.
      In Twitter’s case, a warning label on the tweet will say “Official sources called this election differently”, or that “Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted”. Users would still be able to quote tweet the post, but not to like or retweet it.
      The company says it will consider a result official after it has been declared by a state election official, or confirmed by two or more of a list of news outlets including Fox, CNN and the Associated Press.
      Facebook’s warning labels, applied on both Facebook and Instagram, will state that “votes are being counted. The winner of the 2020 US presidential election has not been projected.” The company has also updated its “voting information centre”, which was that “Some election results may not be available for days or weeks. This means things are happening as expected.”
      “Election officials will get the vote count right, and slower results reporting does not mean wrong or fraudulent results,” Facebook advises its users. “All Americans need to give election officials the time to do their jobs right.” More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Associated Press changes influential style guide to capitalize 'Black'

      by

      Move comes amid continued protests over racism and policing Brookings scholar: ‘This is the big domino to fall’ A protester at Town Field Park in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, on Friday. Photograph: Chuck Nacke/Rex/Shutterstock The Associated Press has changed its influential writing style guide to capitalize the “b” in the term Black when referring […] More