The White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday because the news agency has not altered its style on the Gulf of Mexico, which U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered renamed to the Gulf of America, the news agency said.
Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, said the White House informed the nonprofit news agency that the AP would be blocked from the Oval Office event if the outlet did not align its editorial standards with Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
An AP reporter attempted to enter the White House event on Tuesday afternoon but was turned away. Later Tuesday night, a second AP reporter was barred from an event in the White House Diplomatic Room.
“As a global news organization, The Associated Press informs billions of people around the world every day with factual, nonpartisan journalism,” Pace said in a statement.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” Pace said. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association, or WHCA, also condemned the decision as “unacceptable.”
“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news,” WHCA President Eugene Daniels said in a statement.
The White House did not immediately reply to a VOA request for comment in response to the AP and WHCA statements.
Shortly after being inaugurated, Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, the highest peak in North America. According to his order, the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali would revert to Mount McKinley — its name before President Barack Obama changed it in 2015.
A few days later, the AP announced that the news agency would continue referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging the new name Trump had picked. The AP said it made that decision because the gulf has carried the Gulf of Mexico name for more than 400 years and that other countries and international bodies do not need to recognize the name change.
However, since the area of the Alaskan mountain lies entirely in the United States and Trump has authority to change the name, the AP said it will use the name Mount McKinley.
Thousands of journalists and writers around the world follow the AP’s style.
Voice of America typically follows the AP’s style, but VOA’s standards editor announced in late January that the congressionally funded but editorially independent news outlet would begin referring to the body of water as the Gulf of America, in addition to referring to the mountain as Mount McKinley.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
