You’ve heard by now that the Trump White House has said henceforth it will choose which news outlets will be included in the press pool that covers the president.
On the whole, we don’t believe this is a wise idea. A White House that chooses its coverage would choose only sympathetic news outlets, wouldn’t it? And the president, we know, enjoys flattering coverage. But that way we’re not sure we’d ever get the straight story, or as straight as supposedly unbiased news outlets have been giving us.
And that would make us little different from totalitarian regimes, which provide only the news the ruling leader wants us to have. We know from nearly 250 years of U.S. history that’s not who we are – freedom of the press is in the Constitution, after all – and never should be.
But hear us out.
If the White House has said it will choose which news outlets will cover the president, that means somebody else was choosing before. That someone was the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), which one could assume, like most Washington, D.C., news outlets, is peopled by largely left of center members.