(AFP) – The White House said Monday it is “seriously considering” taking control of deciding which journalists get seats in the famed briefing room, in the latest bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to exert power over the media. The 49 spots in the press room, where spokespeople, officials, and occasionally the president take the podium, have long been allocated by the non-partisan group of independent journalists, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA).
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the WHCA of trying to maintain a “monetized monopoly over the briefing room.” “As for switching up seating in the briefing room, it’s something we are seriously considering,” she told Fox News. “The briefing room is part of the People’s House; it belongs to the American people. It does not belong to elitist journalists here in Washington DC.”
News outlet Axios reported earlier that the White House wanted to take control of the seating chart to give more prime front-of-room spots to new media and move some legacy outlets further back. The WHCA, of which AFP is a member, opposed the “wrong-headed” move. “The reason the White House wants control of the briefing room is the same reason they took control of the pool: to exert pressure on journalists over coverage they disagree with,” WHCA President Eugene Daniels said in a statement.
The WHCA and the White House both said they had tried to broker a meeting on the issue. It is the latest effort by the White House to shape who covers Trump after taking control from the WHCA in February of the “pool” that covers the president in the Oval Office and when he travels on Air Force One.
The White House has added access to the pool for new and, in several cases, openly pro-Trump media, while reducing access to mainstream organizations. It also continues to bar the Associated Press news agency from almost all presidential events as it refuses to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” the name newly decreed by Trump.
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