The White House is starting a new media policy that restricts wire services' access to the president

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The White House is starting a new media policy that restricts wire services' access to the president

2025-04-17 00:42 Last Updated At：00:50

The Associated Press says that a new White House media policy violates a court order by giving the administration sole discretion over who gets to question President Donald Trump, and the news agency asked a federal judge on Wednesday to enforce that order.

The swift move was in response to a policy issued late Tuesday by the White House, which suffered a courtroom loss last week over The Associated Press' ability to cover Trump. The plans, the latest attempt by the new administration to control coverage of its activities, sharply curtail the access of three news agencies that serve billions of readers around the world.

The AP filed Wednesday's motion with U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, asking for relief “given defendant's refusal to obey” his order last week. McFadden said the White House had violated the AP's free speech by banning it from certain presidential events because Trump disagreed with the outlet's decision not to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday. Leavitt is a defendant in the AP's lawsuit, along with White House chief of staff Susan Wiles and her deputy, Taylor Budowich.

The AP's lawsuit claimed that its First Amendment rights were violated by the White House blocking its reporters and photographers from covering Trump. McFadden ordered the administration to treat the AP as it does other news organizations.

For many years, the independent White House Correspondents Association has run the pool for the limited space events, and each time it has included reporters from the wire services AP, Reuters and Bloomberg. One print reporter was also allowed, selected on a rotating basis from more than 30 news outlets.

The White House now says it will lump the three wire services with print reporters for two slots — meaning roughly three dozen reporters will rotate for two regular slots. Wire services typically report and write stories that are used by different media outlets around the world.

Even with the rotation, the White House said Trump’s press secretary “shall retain day-to-day discretion to determine composition of the pool.” The new policy says reporters will also be allowed in “irrespective of the substantive viewpoint expressed by an outlet.”

Seeing their own access cut back along with the AP's, representatives from Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters also protested the new policy.

“For decades, the daily presence of the wire services in the press pool has ensured that investors and voters across the United States and around the world can rely on accurate real-time reporting on what the president says and does,” said Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “We deeply regret the decision to remove that permanent level of scrutiny and accountability.”

In a statement, the AP’s Lauren Easton said the outlet was deeply disappointed that rather than restore the AP’s access, the White House instead chose restrictions over all of the wire services.

“The wire services represent thousands of news organizations across the U.S. and the world over,” said Easton, an AP spokeswoman. “Our coverage is used by local newspapers and television stations in all 50 states to inform their communities.

“The administration’s actions continue to disregard the fundamental American freedom to speak without government control or retaliation,” Easton said Tuesday night.

The WHCA said the administration’s insistence on retaining control over who covers the president shows that it is unwilling to guarantee that it would not continue viewpoint discrimination. “The government should not be able to control the independent media that covers it,” said Eugene Daniels, the association’s president.

Under Leavitt, the White House has given greater access to news outlets friendly to Trump. That was visible Tuesday, when the first reporter Leavitt addressed during a briefing asked two questions while also praising Trump policy.

At Monday’s Oval Office meeting, Trump bristled at questions from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about a man deported to an El Salvador prison, at one point accusing CNN of “hating our country.” He made it a point to contrast her questions with a non-pointed one from another reporter.

Despite the occasional fireworks, Trump has made himself accessible to the media more than his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. Cramped-quarters events, particularly in the Oval Office, are some of his favorite places to talk — rendering the new access policy all the more impactful.

The new policy advanced on Tuesday did not address access for photographers. At an earlier court hearing about the AP’s case, the outlet’s chief White House photographer, Evan Vucci, and correspondent Zeke Miller testified about how the ban has hurt the business of a news agency built to quickly get news and images to its customers.

The dispute stems from AP’s decision not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, although AP style does cite Trump’s wish that it be called the Gulf of America. McFadden agreed with AP’s argument that the government cannot punish the news organization for what it says — for exercising its right to free speech.

The White House has argued that press access to the president is a privilege, not a right, that it should control — much like it decides to whom Trump gives one-on-one interviews. In court papers filed last weekend, his lawyers signaled that even with McFadden’s decision, the AP’s days of unchallenged access to open presidential events were over.

“No other news organization in the United States receives the level of guaranteed access previously bestowed upon the AP,” the administration argued. “The AP may have grown accustomed to its favored status, but the Constitution does not require that such status endure in perpetuity.”

The administration has appealed McFadden’s ruling, and is scheduled to be in an appeals court on Thursday to argue that ruling should be put on hold until the merits of the case are fully decided, perhaps by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The administration has not curtailed AP access to Leavitt’s briefings over the past two months. It has blocked access to events in the East Room to White House-credentialed AP reporters — until Tuesday, when one was allowed into an event that involved the Navy football team.

David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

Sharks drew crowds who chased and fed them off Israel's coast — until one man disappeared

2025-04-22 18:35 Last Updated At：18:41

HADERA, Israel (AP) — Israeli police on Tuesday were scouring the waters off the country's Mediterranean coast for a swimmer who they fear may have been attacked by a shark, in an area that for decades has seen close encounters between marine predators and beachgoers who sometimes seek them out.

A shiver of endangered dusky and sandbar sharks has been swimming close to the area for years, attracting onlookers who approach the sharks and drawing pleas from conservation groups for authorities to separate people from the wild animals.

Nature groups say those warnings went unheeded and on Monday, police were forced to launch a search after receiving reports that a swimmer was attacked by a shark on a beach near the Israeli city of Hadera.

On Tuesday, the beach near Hadera was closed off as search teams scoured the sea by boat and underwater equipment for the swimmer. The man’s identity was not immediately known, but Israeli media said he had gone to swim with the sharks.

Israelis flocked in large numbers to the beach during a weeklong holiday, sharing the waters with a dozen or more sharks. Some tugged on the sharks’ fins, while others threw them fish to eat. Dusky sharks can stretch 4 meters (13 feet) long and weigh about 350 kilograms (750 pounds). Sandbar sharks are smaller, growing to about 2.5 meters (8 feet) and 100 kilograms (220 pounds).

Yigael Ben-Ari, head of the Israel’s Parks and Nature Authority’s marine ranger force, said it was unknown how the man believed to have been attacked behaved around the sharks, but he said the public had a responsibility to recognize that it shouldn’t enter the waters and definitely should not touch or play with the sharks.

One video shared by Israeli media showed a shark swimming right up to bathers in thigh-deep water.

“What a huge shark!” the man filming exclaims, as the shark approaches him. “Whoa! He’s coming toward us!”

“Don’t move!” he implores a boy standing nearby, who replies “I’m leaving.”

The man then asks, “what, are you afraid of the sharks?”

The behavior, some of which was witnessed by an Associated Press photographer two days before the attack, flew in the face of the Parks and Nature Authority’s advice not to approach the sharks.

“Like every wild animal, the sharks’ behavior may be unpredictable,” the authority said in a statement.

This would be just the third recorded shark attack in Israel, according to Ben-Ari. One person was killed in an attack in the 1940s.

The area, where warm water released by a nearby power plant flows into the sea, has for years attracted dozens of sharks between the months of October and May. Ben-Ari said swimming is prohibited in the area, but swimmers enter the water anyway.

“It would have been appropriate to take steps to preserve and regulate public safety, but over the years chaos has developed in the area,” the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, an environmental group, said in a statement.

It said fishermen, boats, divers, surfers and snorkelers intersected dangerously with a wild animal that “is not accustomed to being around crowds of people.”

SPNI said further steps were needed to prevent similar incidents, like designating a safe zone from where people could view the sharks without swimming close to them.

Israeli authorities on Monday closed the beach and others nearby.

Goldenberg reported from Jerusalem.