I am aware that President Donald Trump is allowed to do what he wants within reason, but the actions that his administration pulled on Friday afternoon are pushing the line. At the off television briefing that was done by the White House press secretary Sean Spicer, he spoke to a room of handpicked news outlets and went as far as barring some of the major news outlets from the briefing.
[Jon]
The news outlets that were barred from the briefing were CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico. It should be noted that since President Trump has been in office, he has vowed to stop the “fake news.” He recently made comments saying that the media was an enemy of the American people. I say that this pushes the line because this shows that if you speak wrong of the President then you are not allowed to cover him. This is also in clear violation of our first amendment with freedom of speech.
Instead of barring these news outlets, he should have handled this situation more head on. I don’t agree with this at all because the media is doing their job by reporting what the president is doing. Essentially, these outlets were speaking the truth and his administration couldn’t handle it. As many Americans know, the media outlets all report from different angles.
It should be noted that some of the outlets that were allowed in were Breitbart, the Washington Times, and One America News. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because these outlets have not reported anything negative about Trump or his administration. Breitbart also should not be a surprise to have been one of the outlets that were allowed in as Trump’s right hand man Steve Bannon had a major role with them prior to joining the Trump administration.
It should be noted that representatives from the Associated Press, Time Magazine, and USA Today would end up boycotting the briefing due to how the situation was handled. Also it should be noted that the common theme that was presented by the outlets that were barred were that they have never seen this happen before. I also don’t see this helping the already tense relationship between Trump and the media, but we shall see how this all plays out in the end.