Anyone who has been paying attention in recent years knows that the press coverage of the White House is very different when a Republican is President than when a Democrat is President. That has to do with who controls the amount of access which news outlets have. In the past, access has been largely controlled by the White House Correspondents Association. That is about to change.
On Tuesday, Townhall reported:
“For decades a group of DC based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore,” Leavitt said. “All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table.”
“We are going to give the power back to the people,” she continued.
The move comes less than 24 hours after the White House won a legal fight against the Associated Press, which was kicked out of the press pool — a small group of reporters covering events — two weeks ago.
“As we have said from the beginning, asking the President of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right. We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies, and President Trump will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press. This is the most transparent Administration in history,” the White House released in a statement Monday.
The American public is not uninformed. Unfortunately, most who watch the mainstream media are misinformed. Allowing media other than the mainstream media to ask questions is a step in the right direction.
According to Ultraculture:
Six—six—conglomerates currently run the mainstream media, controlling over 90% of the media we consume; that was consolidated from 50 companies in 1980. Those six conglomerates are GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS. And while they may not be as nepotistic as Murdoch’s NewsCorp, the general trend of centralization is still having chilling effects on free speech.
This is the reason we need more media companies represented in the White House Press Room.