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White House press briefings are going to have a different feel to them moving forward if they haven't had it already.
It was announced last week that the Trump White House would assume full control of the daily press pool. The power to select which news outlets get to cover the White House is no longer held by the White House Correspondents Association.
This means various media outlets, who may not have had access to the White House before, will now have the ability to be present for White House briefings. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the press operations should reflect the media habits of the American people.
"By deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people who President Trump was elected to serve,” Leavitt said last week.
This also comes after the Associated Press was declined a temporary restraining order from DC US District Judge Trevor McFadden to restore the outlet to the pool. The AP was barred by Trump officials for two weeks for refusing to update its influential Stylebook to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Contributing editor to The American Spectator and former Reagan White House official Jeffrey Lord said the problem with the current pool of press is that they are nearly all out to get Trump.
"If you've got people in the press corps who are seriously anti-Trump, then you're not necessarily going to get the kind of back and forth you want with the Press Secretary," Lord explained.
The press seems to be more worried about "scoring points" rather than gathering information for whatever the issue at hand might be.
Moving forward, Press Secretary Leavitt expects more media outlets will be granted access to the briefings instead of the usual faces. Thousands of outside media outlets have already requested access to the press room.
"There is an intent to get some of these podcast people and talk radio people into the White House press room as opposed to the usual press corps," said Lord.
The hope is that the traditional media outlets would learn from what happened to the AP and not act out of line to where they have their White House privileges revoked.
"It's not up to the AP to like or not like what President Trump has done in his official capacity as president," Lord said. "It's their job simply to report what he did, but they played this game where they were in essence taking a political stance."