On Friday, the White House barred several media outlets from attending a meeting with press secretary Sean Spicer. Among those barred were CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, BuzzFeed and others, while the Associated Press and Time did not attend in protest.
Cable news networks NBC, ABC and Fox News were permitted to attend, as were Breitbart and the Washington Times.
The move was widely decried by journalists, who blasted the administration’s “authoritarian” decision and called on media organizations to stand in solidarity with the outlets barred from attendance.
Said it in 2009 & again today: Inappropriate for any White House to decide which news outlets are acceptable. https://t.co/uSq99T5XmG— Jake Tapper (@Jake Tapper) 1487965953.0
All news organizations must refuse to attend briefings where major outlets are excluded because of critical coverag… https://t.co/bRyxtUkdZV— Joe Scarborough (@Joe Scarborough) 1487965066.0
Blocking established news outlets was entirely predictable. It's straight out of the authoritarian playbook & featu… https://t.co/ExwIxtP5vV— Mindy Finn (@Mindy Finn) 1487964529.0
Can we have a round of applause for the AP and Time magazine which boycotted Sean Spicer gaggle after the NYT, WP and CNN were barred.— Walter Shapiro (@Walter Shapiro) 1487965486.0
This is really outrageous https://t.co/6nU7TfIFeI— John Bresnahan (@John Bresnahan) 1487965412.0
This has gotten nuts. Trump White House taking another page out of the Soviet playbook. https://t.co/p8qHipz8Et— Stuart Rothenberg (@Stuart Rothenberg) 1487965374.0
Some confusion ensued over whether today's briefing could be described as a press gaggle, a media scrum or an otherwise informal gathering. As the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza explained:
Gaggle. Call it what you want. Certain organizations were let in and others weren't. That's bad. Period. https://t.co/wyJg3auJSj— Chris Cillizza (@Chris Cillizza) 1487966309.0
