For decades, the White House did not decide which reporters had close access to the president. Instead, the press itself, through the White House Correspondents’ Association, selected the small, rotating group of journalists – the press pool – who covered events happening in physically tight spaces.
The principle was simple: a free press, not the government, should shape how the public learns about the world’s most powerful person. Republican and Democratic administrations alike respected this independent system.
President Trump is deliberately dismantling this system.
The White House is now exerting unprecedented control over who gets to join the approximately 13-person press pool, increasingly favoring sympathetic outlets and sidelining reporters from organizations known for holding the powerful to account. (For context: the press pool has never been the full White House press corps, but a representative group of correspondents and photographers who cover small settings like meetings, motorcades, and Air Force One trips. Their reports are then shared with the larger press corps. It’s not exclusive access, it’s collective access.)
Seizing control of the press pool is part and parcel of Trump’s hostility toward the press, which has only escalated during his second term. Yet a recent survey shows that fewer Americans seem to notice. A Pew Research Center report found that just 36% of Americans said they had heard a lot about Trump’s relationship with the media, down from 72% in March 2017.
This isn’t just a niche story about the media. This is about defending democracy from bad faith efforts to undermine free speech and public accountability. Here are five reasons you should be alarmed:
1. Undermining the public’s right to know
The press pool – its foundations rooted in the 1930s during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration – was designed to ensure fair and representative coverage of the presidency by including a range of outlets, which today includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), the press pool operated with an independent, rotating system to allow outlets shared opportunities to participate.
Recent moves by the Trump administration to subvert this system and control which outlets get in, and which get left out, are turning a tool of accountability into a curated messaging platform that deliberately limits the public’s access to full, accurate, and independent information.
When a small group of pool reporters attends closed-door events, they’re not there for themselves. They file detailed reports that the rest of the press – including small or regional outlets far from Washington – rely on to keep their audiences informed. With this access restricted or manipulated, the result is predictable: the public sees less, knows less, and understands less about what its government is doing.
While the administration is currently still including independent outlets, their presence has been diminished to make room for journalists openly backing the administration’s agenda who previously weren’t part of the pool. And because pool reporters share their dispatches with the wider press corps, these shifts affect not just who’s in the room, but what kind of information reaches the public more broadly, as well as how it’s framed.
Recent reporting shows the Trump administration has also withheld at least two pool reports from the official White House mailing list for news outlets, which is a listserv of sorts that contains reports from journalists covering the president. This decision was apparently taken to keep unflattering information from wider circulation. While pool reporters submit their updates to a separate, WHCA-run email list, many journalists who aren’t part of the WHCA rely on the White House list alone. Selectively blocking reports on the White House list is another way the administration has tried to limit the reach of information.
The White House’s intentions for taking control of the press pool and censoring pool reports are increasingly clear: When access is skewed toward compliant or cheerleading media, the government can shape the narrative. Meanwhile, the public loses a direct line to truth and transparency.
2. Punishing speech the White House doesn’t like
The Associated Press, a global news organization that reaches an estimated 4 billion people daily, chose to continue using “Gulf of Mexico” to describe the body of water between the U.S. and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, after Trump renamed it “Gulf of America” by executive order. In response to the AP continuing to apply a term in use for four centuries, the White House retaliated.
The Trump administration banned the AP from the press pool and other official events, punishing the outlet for not using language the administration deemed acceptable. In a clear win for press freedom – and the First Amendment – a federal judge subsequently ruled that the White House could not restrict access of this nature based on viewpoint.
But instead of restoring the AP’s access, the administration expanded the punishment, removing all three major wire services – AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg – from their designated daily pool slots and shifting them into the general “print” rotation. That change might seem small, but it drastically reduces how often these major outlets can cover the president up close.
These wire services are a backbone of American journalism. Tens of thousands of local, national, and international news organizations around the world rely on their fast, reliable reporting, as do countless businesses and governments. Shutting off their daily proximity to the president of the United States isn’t just petty. It’s dangerous.
This has nothing to do with space limitations or scheduling logistics. It’s about control. It’s about punishing independent reporting and rewarding compliant coverage. It’s about manipulating the flow of information to serve political power, rather than the public interest.
3. Undermining the public’s ability to hold power to account
A functioning democracy depends on one core principle: those in power must answer to the public. With AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg being pushed to the sidelines, the public will get a narrower, more filtered version of reality. That means fewer hard questions will be asked of those in power.
Presidents shouldn’t get to choose or dodge their critics. And letting that become routine means giving up one of the most essential tools we have in our nation to hold a government accountable – a government that, as Abraham Lincoln put it, is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
The latest moves by the Trump administration mark a clear escalation from his first term. In 2018, the White House revoked CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass after a heated exchange, a move that was quickly challenged in court and overturned. In 2009, the Obama White House briefly tried to exclude Fox News from a press pool interview, but after other networks objected, the administration relented – providing a sharp contrast to Trump’s sustained effort to control the press pool now. That bipartisan backlash in 2009 shows just how deeply rooted the expectation of open press access has been in American political life.
When long-standing norms around press access are violated and the public shrugs, it opens the door for future administrations, regardless of party, to lean into even more authoritarian tactics: controlling who gets to ask questions, punishing critical coverage, and rewarding compliant messaging.
Granting access based on loyalty or political utility is a radical departure from past precedent in the U.S. It’s a direct threat to the public’s ability to demand answers from those who wield power.
4. More questions from loyalist outlets, less time for scrutiny
Some might say, “What’s the big deal? There are still reporters in the room.” That’s a bit like saying the First Amendment is working as long as someone is talking. Who is speaking – and who isn’t – also matters.
Journalism depends on tough questions, diverse voices, and the freedom to challenge power. A press corps stacked with sycophants and handpicked allies isn’t journalism. It’s propaganda.
When the White House singles out right-leaning outlets for access, it elevates partisanship over independence. That fuels an information environment where disinformation can thrive, since many of the outlets the White House is making space for have a track record of amplifying political messaging rather than questioning it.
Even outside the press pool, this dynamic is spreading: full press briefings – those typically run by the press secretary – dedicate more time to Trump-friendly personalities while shrinking the space for hard-hitting watchdogs.
When critical questions go unasked, power goes unchecked. When the public stays silent about these behind-the-scenes erosions to press access, it normalizes a future where truth is curated by the administration.
5. Threats to control the briefing room’s seating chart
In addition to the press pool, for decades, the White House Correspondents’ Association – not the White House – has also controlled the seating chart in the press briefing room. The system prioritizes outlets with broad reach and a history of serious, independent reporting. Reporters in the front rows are more likely to get their questions answered by the press secretary.
Now, the White House wants to take over that responsibility. As with other recent actions, this is likely so that they can promote outlets they deem sufficiently loyal. That could mean pushing seasoned watchdogs to the back rows and seating partisan personalities, more likely to lob softballs, nearer to the press secretary.
Where reporters sit in the 49-seat room may seem a minor point, but it’s an important signal of a broader strategy. The White House wants to show it can shape the narrative not just by what’s said, but by who gets to be heard. If nonpartisan reporters are physically farther from the podium, their chances of being heard may shrink.
What’s at stake is more than a few feet of space. This is a historically independent process, designed to prevent political interference in deciding who gets to ask questions on behalf of the public. If the White House politicizes the seating chart, it’s yet another way of tightening its grip on the information Americans receive.
Final thoughts
The White House claims it’s reshaping press access to reflect how Americans consume news in 2025. Undoubtedly, news consumption habits of Americans have shifted substantially in recent years, but nearly every change from the White House press team is moving in one clear direction: consolidating control in ways that serve the president’s political goals, suppressing critique and uplifting flattery.
Trump’s assault on a free press extends well beyond the press pool. For years, he has worked to discredit independent journalism, branding factual reporting as “fake news” and calling reporters “enemies of the people,” borrowing a favorite phrase of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
This strategy doesn’t stop at rhetoric. Trump has also filed multiple lawsuits against journalists and media outlets, often alleging defamation and bias, with targets including The New York Times, CBS News, and ABC News, and pushed a newly politicized Federal Communications Commission to investigate outlets it disfavors, testing the limits of its regulatory authority to intimidate the press.
The effect has been to embolden other politicians and members of the public to treat journalists with open hostility, weakening the press’s ability to serve as a check on power and even putting lives at risk.
These changes to the White House press apparatus aren’t simply about who gets a seat on Air Force One. They’re about whether a free press, and the public’s right to know, can withstand sustained, systemic pressure from those who would rather rule without scrutiny or checks on their power.
And that should alarm us all.
