The New York Times (NYT) and other media outlets were left reeling after the White House moved to directly control which reporters have access to President Trump via the shared press pool.
Breaking with tradition, the administration will assign which news outlets are allowed close access to the president. “The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday
Currently it’s the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), made up of members of the media, which decides who can have privileged access to the president.
Commenting, a spokesperson for the NYT said the move to “handpick favored reporters to observe the president … is an effort to undermine the public’s access to independent, trustworthy information about the most powerful person in America.”
WHCA said in a statement that the decision “tears at the independence of a free press” in the country.
Trump Targets Legacy Media
It comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on what it calls the “legacy media” and preference for a “new media set” of podcasters and influencers. Shortly after the inauguration last month Leavitt announced a new cohort of media reporters welcome to apply for the rotating spot in the White House press briefing room.
The current administration has a well-known dislike for many traditional media outlets that it feels was biased against Trump during his first administration and during the campaign last year.
But the fight seems to be escalating. The White House banned the Associated Press from the pool earlier this month, after it had refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Trump has already called the AP “radical left lunatics,” though it’s unclear if the two things are related.
Meanwhile the Defense Department removed office space in the Pentagon for eight outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, NPR, CNN and Politico, replacing them with the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, HuffPost News and the Daily Caller.
So-called legacy media including a print reporter and a radio reporter would still be permitted to the White House press pool, while the major TV networks such as Fox (FOX) and Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) CNN will continue to have access, said Leavitt on Tuesday. But new streaming services and other outlets will be added to the group.
Comcast Gets Blasted Too
Meanwhile, NBC reporters may struggle to gain access if recent comments from Trump are anything to go by.
In a post on his social platform slamming various presenters and naming CEO Brian Roberts, President Trump claimed Comcast (CMCSA), should have to “pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done,” due to because of MSNBC’s editorial content. “Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN!,” the president signed off the post.
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Overall, Wall Street has a Hold consensus rating on NYT stock, based four Hold ratings and one Buy. The average NYT price target of $54.20 implies about 13% upside.
