WASHINGTON: The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.
The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.
TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the White House would determine which media outlets would cover the president in smaller spaces such as the Oval Office.
The White House Correspondents’ Association has traditionally coordinated the rotation of the presidential press pool. Reuters, an international wire service, has participated in the pool for decades.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that while traditional media organizations would still be permitted to cover Trump on a day-to-day basis, the administration plans to change who participates in smaller spaces. The pool system, administered by the WHCA, allowed select television, radio, wire, print and photojournalists to cover events and share their reporting with the broader media.
The three wire services that have traditionally served as permanent members of the White House pool, the AP, Bloomberg and Reuters, on Wednesday released a statement in response to the new policy.
The services “have long worked to ensure that accurate, fair and timely information about the presidency is communicated to a broad audience of all political persuasions, both in the United States and globally. Much of the White House coverage people see in their local news outlets, wherever they are in the world, comes from the wires,” the statement from the three organizations said.
“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press.”
HuffPost called the White House decision a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press.
Der Tagesspiegel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, the WHCA also issued a statement protesting the new White House policy.
The move follows the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from being in the pool because it has declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the name Trump has assigned the body of water, or update its widely followed stylebook to reflect such a change.
Leavitt said the five major cable and broadcast television networks would continue to hold their rotating seats in the pool while the White House would add streaming services. Rotating print reporters and radio reporters would continue to be included, while new outlets and radio hosts would be added.
White House bars AP, Reuters and other media from covering Trump cabinet meeting
https://arab.news/y7d5z
White House bars AP, Reuters and other media from covering Trump cabinet meeting
- Move follows White House announcement that it would limit media access to the President in smaller spaces
Disinformation the new enemy in disaster zones, says Red Cross
- “Harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” undermines humanitarian aid and putting lives of aid workers at risk
- Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, displaced over 105 million, and killed more than 270,000 — doubling the number in need of humanitarian aid
GENEVA: The rise of disinformation is undermining humanitarian aid and putting lives at risk, while disasters are affecting ever more people, the Red Cross warned Thursday.
“Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, caused more than 105 million displacements, and claimed over 270,000 lives,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
The number of people needing humanitarian assistance more than doubled in the same timeframe, the IFRC said in its World Disasters Report 2026.
But the world’s largest humanitarian network said that “harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” were increasingly undermining trust, putting the lives of aid workers at risk.
“In polarized and politically-charged contexts, humanitarian principles such as neutrality and impartiality are increasingly misunderstood, misrepresented or deliberately attacked online,” it said.
The IFRC has more than 17 million volunteers across more than 191 countries.
“In every crisis I have witnessed, information is as essential as food, water and shelter,” said the Geneva-based federation’s secretary general Jagan Chapagain.
“But when information is false, misleading or deliberately manipulated, it can deepen fear, obstruct humanitarian access and cost lives.”
He said harmful information was not a new phenomenon, but it was now moving “with unprecedented speed and reach.”
Chapagain said digital platforms were proving “fertile ground for lies.”
The IFRC report said the challenge nowadays was no longer about the availability of information but its reliability, noting that the production and spread of disinformation was easily amplified by artificial intelligence.
- ‘Life and death’ -
The report cited numerous recent examples of harmful information hampering crisis response.
During the 2024 floods in Valencia, false narratives online accused the Spanish Red Cross of diverting aid to migrants, which in turn fueled “xenophobic attacks on volunteers,” the IFRC said.
In South Sudan, rumors that humanitarian agencies were distributing poisoned food “caused people to avoid life-saving aid” and led to threats against Red Cross staff.
In Lebanon, false claims that volunteers were spreading Covid-19, favoring certain groups with aid and providing unsafe cholera vaccines eroded trust and endangered vulnerable communities, the IFRC said.
And in Bangladesh, during political unrest, volunteers faced “widespread accusations of inaction and political alignment,” leading to harassment and reputational damage, it added.
Similar events were registered by the IFRC in Sudan, Myanmar, Peru, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Kenya and Bulgaria.
The report underlined that around 94 percent of disasters were handled by national authorities and local communities, without international interventions.
“However, while volunteers, local leaders and community media are often the most trusted messengers, they operate in increasingly hostile and polarized information environments,” the IFRC said.
The federation called on governments, tech firms, humanitarian agencies and local actors to recognize that reliable information “is a matter of life and death.”
“Without trust, people are less likely to prepare, seek help or follow life-saving guidance; with it, communities act together, absorb shocks and recover more effectively,” said Chapagain.
The organization urged technology platforms to prioritize authoritative information from trusted sources in crisis contexts, and transparently moderate harmful content.
And it said humanitarian agencies needed to make preparing to deal with disinformation “a core function” of their operations, with trained teams and analytics.
