Last week, the White House announced that it “will determine” the news outlets that cover President Donald Trump, instead of rotating traditional ones, breaking more than a hundred years of tradition.
The top editors of the AP, Reuters and Bloomberg denounced the restriction. They said the unheard-of action jeopardized the principle of open reporting, harming the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.
The move raises troubling First Amendment issues because the president will choose who will cover him. Since most Americans learned about free speed in their middle school civics class, we must be alarmed by what it could mean for democracy.
“This is a dangerous move for democracy,” Jon Marshall, a media history professor at Northwestern University, told the Associated Press.
So, what happens when the White House gets to choose?
“It means the president can pick and choose who covers the executive branch, ignoring the fact that it is the American people who, through their taxes pay for the running of the White House, the president’s travels and the press secretary’s salary,” said Marshall, who is also the author of “Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis.”
In other words, while Trump is an employee of We the People, he still decides how he and his policies are portrayed.
We can already feel the aftershocks of this decision.
Take, for example, Real America’s Voice host Brian Glenn. Real America’s Voice is a right-wing to far-right streaming, cable and satellite television channel founded in 2020. Glenn is one of the MAGA media stars set to see increased access to the White House under Trump.
You may not have heard of Brian Glenn, but now that he is a regular at the White House, you will listen to nothing but him and his curated thoughts.
Glenn was part of a group inside the White House last weekend when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was booted out of the White House after Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance berated him, shouting to Zelensky that he was not thankful enough for the U.S.’s support.
What might be less known is that Glenn is Marjorie Taylor Green’s boyfriend. Green has been the U.S. representative for Georgia’s 14th congressional district since 2021 and is one of the most vocal Trump supporters in Congress.
Glenn is also the reporter who dressed down Zelensky when he asked if he owned a suit and why he wasn’t wearing one. (Zelensky made it clear in the past that he would wear military garbs to show solidarity with Ukrainian soldiers.)
When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the change, she said traditional outlets from the group would be rotated and some streaming services added. She positioned the change as a modernization of the press pool, meaning it would be open to those without prior access. However, she wasn’t talking about legacy media.
She was referring to giving access to social media influencers, podcasters and bloggers, often called “influencers.” Nevertheless, many in this group call themselves journalists. Influencers are not journalists—they express their opinions, not the news. They are often scrutinized for spreading misinformation because they aren’t required to follow the same editorial guidelines and standards as traditional journalists.
We are supposed to get unbiased news. When you hand-pick the reporters, you shape the narrative, distributing media which is not grounded in facts.
What you get is half-truths, not the complete, informed and unbiased stories that we need more than ever.