Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.
Pace said that during a meeting on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, informed an AP reporter that AP’s access to the “Oval Office would be restricted if AP did not immediately align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order”.
When AP didn’t accede to the demands, Pace said, White House staff blocked an AP reporter from attending an executive order signing at the Oval Office and, later, another AP reporter from attending a press event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.
“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”.
