President Donald Trump has never shown much love for America's traditional media. During his first term, he famously called journalists the “enemy of the people” and accused them of “fake news” whenever a critical story came out.
In his second term, he is taking his fractious views much further by curtailing traditional media access to White House events to make space for newer, and frequently right-wing, outlets. He is also threatening to sue the media industry and has punished a top news agency over an editorial policy.
Eight outlets covering the Pentagon have also been ordered to give up their long-held workspaces, mostly to make way for conservative newspapers and TV channels.
The Trump administration says it is offsetting a liberal bias in the traditional media and increasing transparency for the American public, contrasting the President's freewheeling question-and-answer sessions in the Oval Office to his predecessor Joe Biden's closely scripted statements and overall reticence.
But many observers say Mr Trump's efforts to exert a tightening grip over how his administration is covered are damaging journalistic norms in a way that has serious ramifications for a country that has long prided itself on its right to free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
“When you control the media and the sources of information, you don't have a democracy, because people really don't have access to the information to create informed consent,” said Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of communication and an affiliate professor of history at American University.
“This is what the Trump administration has recognised. If they can control the media and information flow, they control culture, which then shapes the narrative of politics.”
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration would now determine which outlets can attend events in the Oval Office and other areas with limited space.
For more than a century, coverage was assigned by the White House Correspondents Association through a pooled system, where a representative from each media platform would attend an event then share information with colleagues.
“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,” Ms Leavitt said. “A select group of DC-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly of press access at the White House.”
The White House on Wednesday blocked Reuters and AP, among others, from covering Mr Trump's first cabinet meeting. Conservative outlets Newsmax and The Blaze were invited instead. On Friday in the Oval Office, one reporter, who is also the boyfriend of far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy why the wartime leader doesn't wear a suit.
The WHCA said it had not been informed ahead of time of the change to the pooled system and claimed the move hurts the independence of a free press in the US.
“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,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels said in a statement.
The White House made the announcement shortly after banning AP from some White House coverage over its editorial decision to continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by its original name.
Mr Trump changed the sea's name to the Gulf of America, but that only applies in the US. As a global news agency, AP opted to stay with the original name to avoid confusing readers.
Another sign of Mr Trump's anger at traditional news outlets was the State Department's recent cancellation of subscriptions to outlets like Politico and The New York Times. All told, the subscriptions are worth millions of dollars in an industry that struggles to make money.
He has also sued CBS News over how it edited a 60 Minutes interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, last year. On Wednesday, he even threatened to sue authors and media outlets that use anonymous sources, following publication of a tell-all book about him.
A love-hate relationship?
President Trump and the US media have long had an uncomfortable, co-dependent relationship. Mr Trump dislikes the press yet craves attention and is a master of generating headlines, often through inflammatory remarks. And while often critical of him, journalists like to cover Mr Trump because audiences are hungry for news on the unorthodox President.
But since his first term ended in 2021, the proliferation of new media outlets has only grown and Mr Trump has realised he doesn't need to play to traditional media as much as he once did, Prof Steinhorn said.
“The gamble and calculus of the Trump administration is that they can circumvent the mainstream media, real journalists, because they believe that their base and enough others will be able to absorb the narrative that they're trying to craft,” he told The National.
“What they're doing, in effect, is trying to normalise far-right propaganda sheets and podcasters as if the they're the equivalent of, or even more important than, real journalists whose mission is to pursue evidence and truth.”
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance against journalists it does not agree with. A Reuters reporter this week asked Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth why he had picked an “underqualified” candidate to become the next chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, as the retired three-star general Dan “Razin” Caine would have to come out of retirement and be promoted to serve in a four-star role.
Instead of responding to the question, Mr Hegseth said he would “reject” it. A separate White House “rapid-response” account shortly afterwards called the reporter, who has covered the Pentagon for a decade, a “Fake News loser”.
