US President, Donald Trump have really beaten more than he can chew this time as he barred New York Times, CNN and other media outfits from attending Friday White House briefing, citing an escalation in the relationship between the media and the young Trump administration.
Not trusting how they would treat his story, Trump last week addressed a rally in Florida. Just today, Trump in Twitter posts blasted the FBI for not tracing the source of a leak of his administration’s links to Russia. The story was published by CNN on Thursday. According to a report by Daily Beast, journalists have expressed outrage at today’s unusual move by the White House.
The Associated Press and Time magazine reportedly boycotted the briefing as a result of the ban of NYT and CNN. White House spokesman, Spicer reportedly allowed sympathetic outlets into the gaggle—an informal question-and-answer session between a press secretary and journalists—including the Washington Times, Breitbart, all Republican and conservative organs and One America News Network.
Jeff Mason, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said the consortium of reporters will “strongly protest” the move and further discuss it with White House press staffers. “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House,” CNN said in a statement.:
“Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.” Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, issued a similar statement:
“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organisations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”
In Trumps words:
“I’m not against the press; I don’t mind bad stories if I deserve them and I tell you, I love good stories, but we won’t. I don’t get too many of them. “They are very dishonest people; in fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people – the fake news.
“They dropped off the word ‘fake’ and all of the sudden, the story became, the media is the enemy; they take the word ‘fake’ out, and now I’m saying, oh, no, this is no good. But that’s the way they are. So I’m not against the media.
“I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake – phony, fake. “A few days ago, I called the fake news ‘the enemy of the people’ – and they are. They are the enemy of the people. “Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said nine people have confirmed. There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people; nine people.
“And I said, give me a break because I know the people who they talked to; there were no nine people but they say, nine people, and somebody reads it and they think, ‘oh, nine people. They have nine sources’; they make up sources.”
The President claimed that he was only against the “fake news media or press” adding, media should disclose their sources. “I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name; let their name be put out there. “Let their name be put out. A source says that Donald Trump is a horrible, horrible human being; let them say it to my face. Let there be no more sources.”
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