korrents

korrents · piece

251. Newsgathering, the First Amendment, and the White House

Steve Vladeck · 21 Sept 2026

Read the piece on stevevladeck.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece ↓

Steve Vladeck did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    The President's exclusion of specific outlets from the White House based on viewpoint is a violation of existing legal precedents.

    Their wordsWhatever other leeway the executive branch may have to restrict press access on national security grounds, hand-picking three outlets to exclude from what the Court's jurisprudence calls a "nonpublic forum" because of the President's disagreement with the putative viewpoint of their reporting is about as close to a textbook violation of the existing precedents as it comes.

  2. Our reading

    A world where the President can exclude outlets based on their reporting would allow any president to create a press corps of government sycophants.

    Their wordsWhatever folks think about the three outlets Trump singled out here (and remember that I'm a CNN analyst), a world in which the President can categorically exclude any outlet from the White House solely because he dislikes their reporting is one in which any president can construct a press room full of sycophants and other sympathetic mouthpieces for the government's policies.

Keep reading