Days after CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House, NPR’s newsroom leader is speaking out, calling the exclusions a direct assault on press freedom and pledging solidarity with any news organization targeted for its reporting on those in power.
President Trump said the move was in response to what he called “fake news” coverage from the three outlets, marking the latest in a series of press restrictions that have drawn First Amendment challenges over the past two years.
In a statement, Editor-in-Chief Thomas Evans said, “Barring journalists from the White House because the president dislikes their reporting is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and NPR condemns it without qualification.”
“The American public has a right to know what its government is doing in its name, not only the coverage a president finds flattering, but the full and accurate account of the use of power and public resources. That right belongs to the public, and it is not the president’s to revoke.”
Tensions escalated further on Monday when CNN, MS NOW and Politico announced they were suing the administration, saying in a joint statement that the White House “revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting.” In response, the White House press pool, made up of Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News, said it would suspend its pooled coverage of the president, arguing in its own statement that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Federal pressure on public media is not new for NPR. Congress voted last year to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that channels federal money to NPR, PBS and hundreds of member stations based on claims of anti-Trump bias.
The Associated Press won a court order last year after its own White House access was revoked over its refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” though a federal appeals court later paused that ruling pending further proceedings, and the case remains unresolved. Separately, a Pentagon credentialing policy restricting reporters from gathering information not pre-authorized by the department led dozens of journalists to surrender their press badges in protest before a federal judge struck down parts of the rule.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, which historically managed the presidential press pool, lost that role to the administration last year.
“The press, and specifically public media, exists to conduct that accounting to every American, in every community, in service to the public interest. NPR and our Member stations will continue to uphold these First Amendment rights, and to stand with any news organization targeted for its reporting,” Evans added.
