Trump White House Press Ban: Why Officials Cited 2011 Obama, San Francisco Chronicle Dispute

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing the Trump administration over its decision to bar the three outlets from the White House, while the administration is defending the move by pointing to a 2011 dispute between the Obama White House and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The three organisations announced on Monday that they were suing President Donald Trump and three of his top aides, describing the ban in their lawsuit as “a direct assault on the First Amendment” and “a blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

The White House has cited past clashes between Democratic administrations and reporters in defending the decision. In a statement defending Friday’s decision, Trump administration officials cited a 2011 incident in which a San Francisco Chronicle reporter recorded protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser and subsequently published the footage.

The journalist involved in that episode, former Chronicle senior political writer Carla Marinucci, acknowledged the dispute but said the circumstances were different. She said the Obama administration objected to the publication of video from an event covered under print pool rules, while the Trump administration has accused news organisations of publishing “fake news” and is now excluding three outlets from the White House.

White House press pool at centre of current dispute

The fight over access affects more than the reporters assigned to individual presidential events because of the role played by the White House press pool.

The pool generally includes television, print, new media and photo reporters who cover events attended by the president and share information with other journalists. Some events on the president’s daily schedule are open to a larger group of reporters, while others are restricted to a small number, making pooled coverage important for organisations that cannot attend directly.

Local pool reporters may be called upon only for a limited number of presidential visits, but the White House press pool provides a continuing on-the-ground reporting presence around the president.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico said their lawsuit was prompted by the decision to exclude them from the White House.

The organisations said in their suit that the ban “could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit or on criticism that the current restrictions go beyond the 2011 dispute.

In a statement, however, the White House said “fake news has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.”

“The lies they smear are a disservice to the American public and tear at the very fabric of our Democracy,” the statement said. “They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside.”

Why the 2011 Chronicle dispute began

The incident cited by the Trump administration took place in April 2011, when then-President Barack Obama held a fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco.

Marinucci was covering the event as a print pool reporter. Her job was to send periodic reports to the White House with details including what the president said and which prominent donors were present. The White House would then distribute the reports to journalists who were not attending.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, protesters interrupted Obama's speech by standing up and shouting about Chelsea Manning, the Army private who had been convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks. Obama later commuted Manning’s sentence.

Marinucci began recording the protest and later posted the video alongside her written report on the Chronicle’s website.

The publication of the footage triggered a dispute with the White House.

The White House “went insane on us,” Marinucci said.

Obama’s press secretary at the time, Jay Carney, said Marinucci had breached the rules for the event because it was restricted to print reporters. He was also accused of threatening to exclude the Chronicle from future presidential press pools in the Bay Area.

Carney rejected that claim at the time.

“No reporters have been banned from covering future presidential events and the White House of course would have no problem including any reporter who follows the rules in pool-only events,” Carney said in a statement.

Chronicle was left out of local pool

Marinucci said the dispute nevertheless resulted in the Chronicle being excluded from the local press pool for a year.

“Our editors really stood up for us,” she said. Even so, the White House “blocked us from the local press pool for a year” after the incident, Marinucci added.

“Normally when Obama came to San Francisco or the Bay Area, the Chronicle was always called on to be the local pool reporter. They didn’t call us for a year,” she said.

Marinucci argued that the restrictions reflected an outdated distinction between print journalism and other forms of reporting. Newspapers had long used photographs and video alongside written stories, she said.

Other people attending the fundraiser had also recorded the protest and posted the footage online, Marinucci said, making it unfair to expect professional journalists not to do the same.

The restriction did not prevent Marinucci or fellow Chronicle politics reporter Joe Garofoli from continuing to cover Obama. Instead, Marinucci said, they found opportunities to report from outside the presidential events they had previously covered as pool reporters.

“We actually got better stories …That was the lesson learned,” Marinucci said. “You can try to keep reporters out of a pool or try to restrict the reporting. If they are good reporters, they will just get more creative on how to get the news.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the dispute centred on the publication of video from the fundraiser and the White House’s interpretation of the rules governing print pool coverage.

Marinucci says Trump case is different

Marinucci said the key difference between the two disputes was the nature of the White House's objections.

Obama’s aides were “trying to control the platform,” she said.

“They never accused us of posting fake news. They just didn’t want us to post a video,” she said. “That’s very different from saying these organizations are fake news and I don’t like what they are doing.”

Marinucci called Trump’s recent ban on the three outlets a “complete violation of the First Amendment”.

“In this case, the president is just absolutely trying to control major news organizations and to censor their coverage,” she said. “I think it’s so incredibly dangerous.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment specifically addressing the differences between the 2011 incident and the current ban.

Carney also did not respond to a request for comment sent to SV Angel, where he now serves as general partner and head of public policy and communications, about the Trump administration’s use of the 2011 dispute to justify its current restrictions.

Reporters continued working despite 2011 restrictions

Marinucci said the Chronicle’s experience showed that limiting access to a press pool did not prevent journalists from continuing to report on the president.

Because she and Garofoli were no longer being called into the local pool, they were able to pursue stories outside the presidential events, hotels and donor gatherings that they would otherwise have covered from inside.

The current dispute has wider implications because reporters in the White House press pool provide information from events that may not be accessible to the wider press corps. Because some presidential events are restricted to a small number of journalists, reporters excluded from the pool cannot attend those events as pool journalists.

“As we did at the Chronicle at the time,” she said, “We figured out ways to make sure we could deliver news to our readers.”