Reporters boycott White House press briefing after Donald Trump bans three major news outlets
Donald Trump’s White House tried to make a power play today against the media by banning several major news outlets from being able to attend a White House press briefing with Press Secretary Sean Spicer. But in what ended up being a power play on the part of the media itself, other major news outlets boycotted the briefing in order to stand in solidarity with those outlets who had been banned from entering.
Trump decided to ban CNN and the New York Times from today’s briefing, the two news outlets he has most often falsely accused of being “fake news,” and he also banned the Huffington Post (Update: the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, and Politico were also banned). Reporters from these three outlets were not allowed to attend Spicer’s Friday afternoon closed-door briefing. But in response, reporters from Time Magazine and the Associated Press decided to boycott the press briefing in protest. After the fact, Reuters also put out a statement announcing that it was “protesting strongly” against what took place.
Naturally, Trump’s White House is now trying to cover for it overreach and subsequent humiliation by lying about it. The White House is claiming that it only selectively included reporters from certain news outlets, rather than excluding the other news outlets in question. It’s a particularly bizarre claim in light of the fact that three smaller conservative propaganda outlets, Breitbart News, The Washington Times and One American News Network were included – which have all bent over backward to give Donald Trump dishonestly favorable coverage – were included in today’s briefing in place of CNN, the Huffington Post, and The New York Times.
The Huffington Post has put together a comprehensive breakdown of what transpired today involving its reporters and the White House briefing, and we recommend you read it. Update: CNN is now reporting on-air that the Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed were also banned from the briefing. CNN is also now reporting that the Wall Street Journal only attended the briefing because it wasn’t aware anyone had been banned, and that it would also have boycotted if it had known what was going on.
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