White House blocks several news outlets from press briefing

The White House on Friday blocked several news organisations from joining an informal, on the record press briefing, in the latest antagonistic move against the press by the administration of President Donald Trump.   

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN and Politico, were barred from the Friday briefing after being repeatedly criticised by senior administration officials, including by Trump who has condemned some as “fake news”.

Several other news organisations were allowed in, including the right-wing website Breitbart News, whose former executive chairman, Steve Bannon, currently serves as Trump’s chief strategist.

The White House defended its decision not to include some news organisations.

"We invited the pool so everyone was represented. We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool. Nothing more than that," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

Earlier Friday in a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Trump doubled down on his attack against “fake news” media which he described as an “enemy of the American people.” 

Reaction from barred media outlets was swift.

"Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest," Dean Baquet, the Times' executive editor, said in a statement.

"This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House. Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like. We'll keep reporting regardless," CNN said in a statement.

The Associated Press and Time magazine who were invited to the briefing chose not to participate following the move by White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Trump last week took to Twitter to attack the news media as  "the enemy of the American people!"

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump wrote.

Many US presidents have criticised the press, but Trump's language has more closely echoed criticism leveled by authoritarian leaders around the world.

The 70-year-old built his campaign on attacking the press as biased.

A day earlier he had launched a long diatribe at a grievance-filled news conference, in which he blamed the media for his one-month-old administration's problems.