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1. Embed this notice
   BrianKrebs (briankrebs@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 17:57:03 JST BrianKrebs

   • Mike Masnick ✅

   The Trump administration is actively censoring the White House press pool, @mmasnick writes for Techdirt.

   "On Tuesday, the White House effectively eliminated the Associated Press from the White House press pool, changing the rules to basically bar the wire service entirely. This is even after (or perhaps in response to) a Trump-appointed judge ruling that the White House was clearly violating the First Amendment in excluding the AP from various press conferences. This isn’t a huge surprise, because last week there were reports that the White House was still excluding AP reporters… and then directly censoring press pool reports that mentioned this and other embarrassing facts."

   "Last week, Oliver Darcy was the first to call out two troubling developments related to this: First, the White House was ignoring the ruling and still blocking the AP from certain access. Indeed, what Darcy had found is that the pool reporter on duty, Joseph Morton, the Washington correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, had written in the pool report the following:"

   “A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press were turned away from joining the pool.”

   "So why are we hearing this from Darcy instead of Morton?"

   "Well, that’s the second discovery that Darcy reported on. The White House is now directly censoring White House press pool reports:"

   "It was likely that sentence, which came after a judge had ordered the administration to restore the AP’s access, that irked the White House. That specific pool report from Morton, I’ve learned, was never distributed by the White House to news outlets subscribed to its pool report mailing list — a notable omission and a clear break from precedent."

   "It also wasn’t the first time this week that the White House chose to censor the pool. On Monday, Philip Wegmann, a reporter for RealClearPolitics, filed a pool report noting that a scheduled press conference between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “cancelled” and was “no longer taking place.” That report, too, was never sent out by the White House."

   https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/18/white-house-censoring-press-pool-reports-while-still-discriminating-against-ap/

   • Embed this notice
     Mike Masnick ✅ (mmasnick@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 17:57:00 JST Mike Masnick ✅

     in reply to

     • VessOnSecurity
     • David Cohen

     @bontchev @davidbcohen @briankrebs the rule is fairly simple: under the 1st amendment *if* the gov't creates a public space for the press, they can only limit press based on things such as room. NOT because of their speech. Here, the WH has been clear that they have blocked AP based on its speech.

     Hence 1A is the issue. It's in the ruling that is linked from my article.

     https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277682/gov.uscourts.dcd.277682.46.0_1.pdf

   • Embed this notice
     VessOnSecurity (bontchev@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 17:57:01 JST VessOnSecurity

     in reply to

     • Mike Masnick ✅
     • David Cohen

     @davidbcohen @briankrebs @mmasnick But why? What was his argumentation? Clearly, there is nothing in the 1st Amendment that mentions these places or excluding journalists from them. It mentions "not abridging the freedom of the press" and "the right to peacefully assemble" - but it seems pretty obvious to me that this means not preventing the press from printing anything they want - not preventing it from assembling in the White House...

   • Embed this notice
     David Cohen (davidbcohen@twit.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 17:57:02 JST David Cohen

     in reply to

     • Mike Masnick ✅
     • VessOnSecurity

     @bontchev @briankrebs @mmasnick It’s not his home (that’s the apartment upstairs). It is a Government building.

     “Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” McFadden wrote. “The Constitution requires no less.”

   • Embed this notice
     VessOnSecurity (bontchev@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 17:57:03 JST VessOnSecurity

     in reply to

     • Mike Masnick ✅

     @briankrebs @mmasnick Banning AP for refusing to comply with the "Gulf of America" name is silly, nasty, and petty - but how exactly is it an infringement on their 1st Amendment rights? Trump isn't forbidding them from printing whatever they want; he's just denying them access to a gathering in his home. (They can probably get what was said there via a FOIA, but that would be pretty useless to them, because other outlets would have already printed the information by that time.)

   • Embed this notice
     Mike Masnick ✅ (mmasnick@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 21-Apr-2025 17:16:56 JST Mike Masnick ✅

     in reply to

     • VessOnSecurity
     • David Cohen

     @bontchev @davidbcohen @briankrebs the 1st amendment has long been interpreted to mean "the gov't cannot punish you for your viewpoint." That's what this is doing.

     I'm not sure what's so confusing about that?

   • Embed this notice
     VessOnSecurity (bontchev@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 21-Apr-2025 17:16:57 JST VessOnSecurity

     in reply to

     • Mike Masnick ✅
     • David Cohen

     @mmasnick @davidbcohen @briankrebs In the ruling, he seems to be saying that the White House *can* exclude journalists from the briefing - just not based on their opinions (which the government has explicitly stated was the reason)? I still don't understand how he makes the jump from "not abridging the freedom to print anything" to "not abridging their access to government briefings"...

     He seems to be basing it on some rulings "Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806; see also Forbes, 523 U.S. at 682"; I'd have to dig up those.