WASHINGTON: The White House Correspondents’ Association said on Thursday CNN has rejected multiple requests to include White House pool reporters inside the studio during the first presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump.
The press pool, made up of representatives of major news organizations including Reuters, accompanies the president on foreign and domestic trips and normally has access to any event where he speaks or appears in public, with the goal of keeping the US public informed.
It is extremely rare for them to be barred from an event in the United States.
“WHCA is deeply concerned that CNN has rejected our repeated requests to include the White House travel pool inside the studio,” Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement.
“The pool is there for the ‘what ifs?’ in a world where the unexpected does happen,” she said, and to provide “context and insight by direct observation and not through the lens of the television production.”
These reporters are there to see what is said and done when the microphones and cameras are off, and provide independent observation, she wrote, with duties “separate from the production of the debate as a news event.”
O’Donnell said both the Biden and Trump campaigns agreed to the WHCA’s request.
CNN has only agreed to allow one White House print pool reporter to enter the studio during a commercial break to “briefly observe the setting.”
The network will also allow still photographers from other outlets to cover the candidates inside the studio and will provide a television feed of the debate to other networks.
CNN has put in place many other rules for the first showdown including two commercial breaks, no props and muted microphones except when the candidates are recognized to speak.
The network said in a statement it is a member of the WHCA and respects the role the group plays to further press freedom and access. But the debate was being held without an audience in a CNN studio and is closed to the press, CNN said.
“Precedent matters for future debates,” O’Donnell said, alluding to Biden and Trump’s face off again in September.
The National Association of Black Journalists has also asked CNN to accredit reporters from local Black-owned news organizations, after none of Atlanta’s Black news groups got credentials to be on-site for the debate.
CNN bans White House pool reporters from debate room
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CNN bans White House pool reporters from debate room
Prince Harry’s war against UK press reaches showdown with Daily Mail case
- Prince Harry to give evidence in London court for second time
- Media accused of phone hacking and other privacy intrusions
LONDON:Prince Harry’s war against the British press heads into a final showdown next week with the start of his
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
