White House removes liberal outlet from press rotation

The White House on Wednesday removed a liberal media outlet from the rotation of reporters granted close access to the president, breaking a long-established precedent of journalists — not the White House — determining which reporters cover it.

HuffPost, an outlet decried by the right as anti-Trump, was slated to serve Wednesday in the press pool, a rotating group of journalists allowed access to the president in smaller settings. Late on Tuesday, HuffPost got an email from press wrangler Allison Schuster, asking which reporter would take the organization’s spot in the pool.

Hours later, S.V. Date, HuffPost’s White House correspondent, got another email from Schuster: “Hey — so sorry for the late notice but we actually can’t fit you in the pool tomorrow,” Schuster said. At 5:59 a.m., he got another email identifying a different publication that would serve as the print pooler.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previewed on Tuesday that the Trump administration would determine which outlets have access to the president as part of the pool allowed into the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and into other meetings and events that cannot accommodate the full press corps.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, a group of journalists on the beat elected by their peers, has long overseen the rotations of print, radio and television correspondents that make up the pool.

Administration officials on Tuesday evening made calls to get another outlet to take the spot previously held by HuffPost. Their first call was to The Wall Street Journal, according to several reporters familiar with conversations. The publication declined.

A spokesperson for the WSJ did not immediately respond for comment.

The White House later called Axios — whose co-founder, Mike Allen, a former longtime POLITICO reporter, was given a special seat and the first question during Leavitt’s first briefing with the press.

Axios accepted — to the dismay of many reporters on campus. “People are annoyed, to say the least,” said one veteran White House reporter.

The in-town print pool rotation for the month was sent out weeks ago, listing HuffPost as the Feb. 26 pooler — an order determined alphabetically among publications that participate in the pool.

In a statement to POLITICO, Axios spokesperson Jake Wilkins said the outlet was not aware it was taking another outlet’s seat when they accepted the spot.

“Under the longstanding WHCA process to determine the pool rotation, and under the new process the Trump administration implemented this week, Axios is not informed about the circumstances under which spots become available,” Wilkins said. “We had nothing to do with the decision to remove HuffPost and were unaware of that decision when we accepted the spot.”

“While we believe the WHCA should retain the right to decide who is in the press pool, Axios continues to participate in the current rotation because it is our job to cover every administration clinically and provide the unbiased reporting our WHCA colleagues expect,” he added.

Leavitt argued the Trump administration changed the pool because the WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” on organizing press pools and that other outlets “that have long been denied” should have an opportunity to cover the president.

WHCA President Eugene Daniels, who is also a POLITICO reporter, argued the move “tears at the independence of a free press” because government leaders should not be able to choose which reporters can and cannot write about them.

Wednesday’s pool included other new faces. The Blaze, a conservative media company founded by Glenn Beck, was given a “New Media” pool spot. A new “secondary TV correspondents and crew” spot was granted to Newsmax, another conservative outlet. And after The Associated Press’ legal battles with the White House over the decision to remove it from a permanent spot in the pool, Bloomberg was listed as the only wire service on Wednesday.

Typically, AP, Reuters and Bloomberg have each been in the pool, as they have historically been used to feed to outlets across the country that don’t have access to Washington and the White House.

Eli Stokols contributed to this report.

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