US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting about the federal
budget in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC,
February 22, 2017. His relationship with the media is worsening. PHOTO |
AFP
WASHINGTON
President Donald
Trump ratcheted up an increasingly hostile feud with the media Saturday,
announcing he will skip a century-old annual correspondents' dinner a
day after a fierce row erupted over press access to the White House.
The
White House triggered widespread outrage on Friday by denying access to
an off-camera briefing to several major US media, including CNN, the
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and Politico.
Smaller
outlets that have provided favourable coverage of the Trump
administration, such as Breitbart and the One America News Network,
received a green light to attend the briefing by the president's
spokesman Sean Spicer.
The move came just hours after
Trump renewed his assault on the mainstream US media by calling it "the
enemy of the people", in an ongoing battle in which he has labeled the
fourth estate "fake news" and the "opposition party".
The
White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) said it was "protesting
strongly" against the decision to selectively deny media access, and
would bring it up with the Republican administration.
The New York Times described the White House decision as "an
unmistakable insult to democratic ideals", while CNN called it "an
unacceptable development" and the Los Angeles Times warned the incident
had "ratcheted up the White House's war on the free press" to a new
level.
TRUMPBLAMES MEDIA
Trump
doubled down in the stand-off Saturday when he announced he will not
attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 29, breaking with
an annual tradition in which the US president is the guest of honour at
a light-hearted roast held by journalists and studded with celebrities.
"I
will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association
Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!"
Trump tweeted.
The WHCA, organiser of the event, which
dates back to 1921, said it would go on as planned as a "celebration of
the First Amendment (on freedom of the press) and the important role
played by an independent news media in a healthy republic'.
Trump
built his campaign on criticizing the mainstream US press — many of
whose editorial boards opposed his election — and has intensified his
rhetoric since taking office, routinely accusing the media of bias in
overstating his setbacks and downplaying his accomplishments.
A
week ago, at his first solo news conference, the 70-year-old launched
into a long diatribe against dozens of journalists that were present,
blaming their "dishonesty" for his month-old administration's troubles.
Trump's
chief strategist Steve Bannon, a former head of the right-wing news
site Breitbart, predicted Thursday that relations with the media would
only get worse as the president rolls out his agenda.
It
is not uncommon for Republican and Democratic administrations to brief a
limited number of select reporters on specific themes.
However,
Friday's event was initially billed as a regular briefing open to
credentialed media before it was reconfigured as a closed event for a
cherry-picked group of participants, taking place in Spicer's office.
UNWISE MOVE
A number of outlets that regularly cover the White House, including newswires Reuters and Bloomberg, attended.
They
are part of what is known as the "pool", a small group of journalists
who have access to certain events and share the contents with other
media.
The Associated Press boycotted the event in protest at the exclusion of certain colleagues.
AFP was not included despite being part of the press pool. Its journalist protested, and attended the briefing uninvited.
During
the off-camera briefing, Spicer said that the White House has shown an
"abundance of accessibility... making ourselves, our team and our
briefing room more accessible than probably any previous
administration".
He did not give an explanation for the media selection.
As
protests erupted over the incident, a December interview re-emerged in
which Spicer told Politico that the Trump White House would never ban a
news outlet.
"Conservative, liberal or otherwise, I think that's what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship," he said.
Ari
Fleischer, a former spokesman for George W. Bush, said he viewed the
White House's stance as "unwise and counterproductive", but also argued
for Friday's incident to be kept in perspective — pushing back against
the suggestion that it threatened the constitutional First Amendment.
"Press secretaries need to meet with the whole press," he told CNN.
"But
beyond that, there is nothing unusual about presidents meeting with
selected reporters, and White House staffs do it all the time too."
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