The White House on Friday banned several news organisations from attending an informal press briefing, in a latest attack against media in United States President Donald Trump's escalating war against the news organisations. White House press secretary Sean Spicer blocked reporters from CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico and BuzzFeed from attending a non-televised briefing.
However, several other reporters got access to the event, including many who represented conservative outlets.
Also read: US President Donald Trump calls 'dishonest' media 'enemy of the American people'
The White House attempted to clarify its decision and said that the move was not made to exclude the journalists from the organisations, which have been most critical of Trump and his administration. However, the news organisations that are considered to be sympathetic towards Trump administration were allowed to attend the briefing, including Fox News, Breitbart and the Washington Times. The list of journalists approved to attend the briefing also included those from CBS, NBC, ABC, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Time and the Associated Press.
However, the reporters from Time and the Associated Press decided against attending the press briefing in protest of the exclusion of carefully selected news organisations.
The ban on these major news outlets came shortly after Trump slammed the media again while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The president called the reporters "dishonest" and "fake" and also denounced the use of anonymous sources in reports about his administration, The Washington Post reported.
Trump, last week, had railed against the media in his tweets, calling the press organisations "enemy of the 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 on Twitter.
Trump had earlier in the day also written another tweet targeting news organisations that he disapproves of: CNN, NBC, New York Times "and many more". He had said that all these media organisation were "SICK!" Trump, however, deleted this tweet soon and came out with another one with two more organisations on his list.
