WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for The Associated Press asked a federal judge Thursday to reinstate the agency’s access to the White House press pool and other official events, saying the Trump administration’s ban is a fundamental attack on freedom of speech and should be overturned. The government insisted there was no evidence that AP had been harmed irreparably.
“AP has now spent 44 days in the penalty box,” said Charles Tobin, speaking on behalf of the news agency.
The AP and the new administration are at odds over the White House’s removal of AP reporters and photographers from the small group of journalists who follow the president in the pool and other events. Last month, AP sued White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and two other administration officials, demanding reinstatement.
The White House retaliated against the news outlet last month for not following President Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
The notion of banning a news agency for what it says — and for not using the words that a government demands — is extraordinarily unusual in a country whose Constitution guarantees free speech without official interference. By punishing AP for what it publishes, the administration has raised questions about what actions the Trump White House might take against any news outlets whose words or images it doesn’t like.
A lawyer for the government, Brian Hudak, told U.S. District Court Judge Trevor N. McFadden that AP hadn’t shown irreparable harm. “There is no showing of exclusion,” he said, adding that AP can still access events in the East Room and document who arrives at the White House and leaves it.
In actuality, AP has been able to access East Room events only occasionally, at the discretion of the White House.
Journalists talk about how the ban has affected AP
Evan Vucci, an AP photographer, testified that the agency was “basically dead in the water on major news stories.” Vucci took a renowned and widely distributed photo of Trump immediately after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last summer; in court, Tobin held up a book published by Trump’s allies that depicted the same photo on its cover.
In his testimony, Vucci said the AP relied on his eyes and expertise to often get photos from the Oval Office on the wire and to the world within a minute after taking them — while the event is still going on.
The AP’s chief White House correspondent, Zeke Miller, also detailed how AP was able to get news to the world quickly while events were happening. But the ban has cut into that ability. Miller said AP wasn’t able to get news out about a delay in instituting tariffs against Canada and Mexico until nearly 40 minutes after a competitor.
“We don’t see the president nearly as much as we did before this ban took effect,” Miller said.
Miller also said that he had noticed that the tone and tenor of questions asked of the president had softened since the AP ban, suggesting that it had a chilling effect on other journalists. But he could not offer specific examples when pressed by the judge.
In cross-examination of the two journalists, Hudak tried to establish that the ban was not as harmful as the AP was making it out to be. For example, he noted that the outlet was able, through licensing deals with other companies, to sell photos from events where it was excluded.
‘Viewpoint discrimination’ is at the center of the case
In last month’s hearing, McFadden refused the AP’s request for an injunction to stop the White House from barring reporters and photographers from events in the Oval Office and Air Force One. He urged the Trump administration to reconsider its ban before Thursday’s hearing. It hasn’t.
“It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden told the government’s attorney at the time.
The AP has sued Trump’s team for punishing a news organization for using speech that it doesn’t like. The news outlet said it would still refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its style guidance to clients around the world, while also noting that Trump has ordered it renamed the Gulf of America.
“For anyone who thinks the Associated Press’s lawsuit against President Trump’s White House is about the name of a body of water, think bigger,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “It’s really about whether the government can control what you say.”
The White House said it has the right to decide who gets to question the president, and has taken steps to take over a duty that has been handled by journalists for decades.
The president has dismissed the AP as a group of “radical left lunatics” and said that “we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”
AP is still covering the president
The case is one of several aggressive moves the second Trump administration has taken against the press since his return to office, including FCC investigations against ABC, CBS and NBC News, dismantling the government-run Voice of America and threatening funding for public broadcasters PBS and NPR.
The AP has still covered the president, and has been permitted in Leavitt’s press briefings, but the ban has cost the organization time in reporting and impeded its efforts to get still images. Even if McFadden rules in favor of the news organization, it’s unclear how the White House will respond to the judge’s order.
A Trump executive order to change the name of the United States’ largest mountain back to Mount McKinley from Denali is being recognized by the AP. Trump has the authority to do so because the mountain is completely within the country he oversees, AP has said.
Writing in the Journal, Pace said the AP didn’t ask for the fight and made efforts to resolve the issue before going to court, but needed to stand on principle.
“If we don’t step up to defend Americans’ right to speak freely,” she wrote, “who will?”
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David Bauder covers media for The Associated Press.
