White House seeks to wrest control of press pool rotation from Correspondents’ Association

WASHINGTON

The White House announced Tuesday that it will control the rotation of the small handful of journalists who are granted access to most of the president’s publicly-noticed events.

Many presidential events are restricted to an in-town or out-of-town pool, depending on whether the president is traveling. For decades, the rotation has been controlled by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which assigns media outlets to cover the print, radio, and television duties on a particular day.

Assigned journalists work that day for the pool, not their media organizations, and are tasked with rapidly disseminating information on the president’s events and remarks to the wider pool in near real-time.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt framed the effort to take control of the rotation from the Correspondents’ Association as a bid to bolster the pool’s inclusion.

“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 told reporters.

“Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join, fear not, but we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility,” she added.

The Correspondents’ Association said it was blindsided by the announcement, which it said “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.”

“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” association President Eugene Daniels said in a statement.

“Since its founding in 1914, the WHCA has sought to ensure that the reporters, photographers, producers and technicians who actually do the work – 365 days of every year – decide amongst themselves how these rotations are operated, so as to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners,” he added.

Daniels said the WHCA board, which is comprised of White House journalists, has “consistently expanded” the group’s membership and pool rotations “to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”

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