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This week, the White House barred Associated Press journalists from three media appearances by President Donald Trump — two of them in the Oval Office itself. Some of the reaction said, effectively, this: What right do you have to be there, anyway?
The answer is a combination of tradition, independent reporting and the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press.
The AP, a global news outlet founded in 1846, is a source of fact-based, independent news that reaches billions of people every day. The news cooperative has been a member of the 13-person White House press pool that has reported on the president and held him accountable since its inception more than a century ago.
The pool gets access to the president on the understanding that it distributes his comments and activities to other news outlets, congressional offices and more.
When the Trump administration blocked the AP from three events, it didn’t just bar the outlet from access to the president; it did so after an or-else demand that the news agency change its style from “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America,” per Trump’s presidential order.
The AP has said that it will refer to the water as the Gulf of Mexico, while noting Trump’s decision to rename it as well. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP says it must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
Here is some background about the relationship between the presidency and the press — now and