As a lifelong journalist, I should be on the side of The Associated Press in its ongoing legal fight with the Trump White House.
And I would be if the AP were the neutral, fact-driven wire service it used to be.
Unfortunately, it has become just another outlet peddling leftist opinion disguised as straight news.
And as its fight with the White House demonstrates, it also reeks of a sense of elite entitlement.
The case involves the AP’s claims that its freedom of speech was violated when it was booted from its long-standing spot in the press pool, an elite, small group of legacy news outlets that get near-daily access to the president.
The AP was one of three wire services in the group, along with Reuters and Bloomberg.
Others getting special access include television and cable companies, photographers, radio reporters and rotating members from print outlets.
Refused to adjust
Because there was just one spot reserved for print reporters, most got only a monthly chance to question the president in small-space events, such as the Oval Office and Air Force One.
The AP got the boot from the group after it refused to change its influential stylebook and continued to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” after President Trump officially changed the name to the “Gulf of America.”
I agreed with the federal judge who ruled the demotion unfairly punished the AP, but have come to admire even more the way the White House has used the case to carry out a much-needed move to democratize access to the president.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest person to hold her job, took office wanting to open the door to new media outlets, including edgy podcasts, political influencers and specialized wire services.
That the new access would involve adding some conservative voices and diluting the near-monopoly of leftist, legacy media was inevitable.
A first step involved a clever response to the court order, which said the AP “cannot be treated worse than its peer wire services.”
So instead of putting the AP back into its guaranteed spot, the White House removed all three wire services and included them in a group of 31 other organizations, while adding a second print spot for the small-space events.
The new rotation means that instead of a guaranteed daily spot, each of the wires will get into the small events about once a month.
Naturally, Reuters and Bloomberg are also howling about their diminished access, and the AP went back to court, claiming the White House move violated the judge’s order.
The judge, Trevor N. McFadden of the federal District Court in DC, disagreed.
He said Friday that he needed more time to study the issue but that the White House seemed to be acting in “good faith,” presumably because the new policy follows his order about the AP and its peers.
Indeed, as the White House put it, “No other news organization in the United States receives the level of guaranteed access previously bestowed upon the AP. The AP may have grown accustomed to its favored status, but the Constitution does not require that such status endure in perpetuity.”
Beyond exposing the AP’s sense of entitlement, the case opens the door to the administration’s plan to break up the stranglehold legacy media have on privileged access to the White House as well as to other federal agencies, such as the departments of State and Defense.
Gatekeeper mentality
Their gatekeeper mentality has become an acute problem in Trump’s two terms because so many of the legacy outlets are openly hostile to him and the Republican Party.
There are next to zero “straight” reports, with nearly every story every day distorted by personal animus toward the president and conservative ideas.
The approach is the opposite of how those same organizations covered the Biden presidency.
Their lockstep behavior in those years featured soft-ball, friendly coverage even as the public turned thumbs down on inflation and open borders, adding to the evidence that big media is out of step with most Americans.
The resulting decline in public trust in the media is warranted, with nearly all of those organizations ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
And despite supposedly being guardians of free speech, none opposed the censorship schemes orchestrated by the White House to protect the first family from reports in The Post and elsewhere of corruption.
Moreover, none of the legacy outlets showed any curiosity about Joe Biden’s obvious mental and physical decline.
Indeed, some like The New York Times, repeated the White House lie that claims of the president’s decline involved altered videos and right-wing talking points.
It was only after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last June, and the panic that Trump would win the election, that the media noticed his condition and declared, in unison, that he had to drop out of the race.
As soon as he did, they all jumped on the Kamala Harris bandwagon and unanimously declared her campaign full of “joy.”
So they can spare us now their claims that they are essential to good government and public knowledge. Too often, they have shielded corruption and misled the public.
This control of like-minded outlets creates a near-monopoly of coverage, one that involves the White House Correspondents Association.
It is a private group that has for decades set up the pool for small-space events and also assigns the 49 seats in the separate briefing room, all of which are held by legacy media.
Upset media apple cart
They, along with the Times and others, are furious that Leavitt has upset their apple cart by scrambling the pool and opening the briefing room to newcomers.
Often as many as 20 people with new credentials can be seen standing along the sides of the room, with some getting a chance to ask a question.
And now reports say she is considering going even further by changing the assigned seats.
Oh, no, the Sky is Falling, screams the correspondents’ association.
Acting like a thuggish union losing its grip on power, it is warning Leavitt against making changes to the seating chart.
In a statement, it said the White House “should abandon this wrong-headed effort and show the American people they’re not afraid to explain their policies and field questions from an independent media free from government control.”
Therein lies the conceit — that only media hostile to Trump are “independent.”
This is the attitude the AP took with grossly inflated claims that its demotion “centers on the government blocking AP’s access to cover events,” as if the agency had been banned from the White House.
Fact check: False!
In truth, Trump is the most accessible president in modern times, and probably takes more questions in a month than Biden took in four years.
To even suggest otherwise is fake news, which unfortunately describes what the AP and its fellow travelers are peddling these days.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
