A federal U.S. district judge allowed the Trump White House to keep its ban on The Associated Press.
The AP sued the Trump administration after the White House restricted the wire service from covering President Donald Trump at his press conferences in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One, as well as at other events, according to CNN.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden didn’t remove the ban nor did he fulfill the AP’s request for a restraining order against members of the Trump administration. The judge didn’t make a final ruling and set the next hearing for March 20.
Why did AP News get banned?
The AP filed a lawsuit last Friday against three members of the Trump administration — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and chief of staff Susie Wiles.
At the heart of the grievance is the AP’s decision to keep “Gulf of Mexico” instead of “Gulf of America,” in its style guide, despite Trump’s move to sign a proclamation changing the body of water’s name on his first day in office.
“The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen,” the outlet declared at the time. “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
The Trump administration responded to the decision by limiting the AP’s access. The AP then sued the Trump administration for violation of its First Amendment rights and for not following due process.
“The AP therefore brings this action to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the Executive Branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language,” the 18-page lawsuit stated.
What did the White House say?
The Trump White House in a statement said that asking the president questions in the Oval Office and on Air Force One “is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right.”
“We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies,” the statement said, before calling the Trump administration “the most transparent” in history.
The White House is making a statement by questioning the word choices set in the AP’s widely-used style guide, which has far-reaching influence on modern-day journalism, including on how other news outlets report on the Oval Office.
“This isn’t just about the Gulf of America,” Budowich told Axios. “This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world.”
Other conservative outlets noted other recent changes introduced by the AP, like capitalizing the word Black when using it in a racial or ethnic sense in 2020 or putting “woke” in quotation marks.
What happens next?
The White House Correspondents' Association filed an amicus brief in support of the AP.
“The government should never interfere with the operation of an independent press, nor should it demand that reporters adopt the government’s messaging, framing, and, indeed, ideological worldview,” the brief said. “Such conduct is wholly at odds with the Constitution and cannot be permitted to persist.”
The federal judge accepted the WHCA’s role as “the referee” in this situation while noting the “problematic” nature of the White House ban.
“The White House has accepted the correspondents’ association to be the referee here, and has just discriminated against one organization. That does seem problematic,” McFadden said during the hearing Monday.