White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt exploded a New York Times reporter as a “left -wing stenographer” after he compared President Trump to the hit of Russian leader Vladimir Putin over press freedoms.
The switch lit with Peter Baker was ignited by it, questioning the administration’s decision to capture the control of the press pool and to grass the Associated Press reporters from the Oval office and the air force one.
Baker, a veteran journalist and former Moscow Correspondent, compared the White House movement to the Kremlin tactics in a post on Tuesday.
“Serving as a correspondent of Moscow in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over his press pool and made sure that only journalists in compliance were access,” Baker wrote.
Leavitt, 27, left with a clown emoji, followed by a pronounced opposition.
“Give me a break, Peter,” she wrote.
“The moments after you tweet this, the president invited reporters to Oval and got questions for almost an hour. Your hysterical reaction to our late and much needed change in an outdated organization is why we did it.”
She then took a personal wire in Baker, criticizing what she described as a unilateral media landscape.
“The days have passed when left -wing stenographers posing as journalists, such as themselves, dictate who should ask what,” she added.
When it was reached by The Post, Baker referred to an article he wrote on Wednesday who remembered the story of Yelena Shrokubova, a former Kremlin pool reporter who was forced to exile from her native Russia after publishing a book that detailed corruption and media censorship by the Putin regime.
The Shkeubova, who was pulled out of the press pool in the Kremlin, left Russia after a bomb left her apartment.
“There are worse penalties, as Mrs. Tarubova would discover later, but in Moscow, at least, her expulsion was an early step down a very slippery slope,” Baker wrote.
“The United States is not Russia in any way, and every comparison risks going far … But for those of us who reported there a quarter of a century ago, Mr Trump’s Washington is bringing Mr. Putin’s Moscow memories in the early days.”
A Times spokesman who was reached by the post referred a statement from the newspaper which read: “The White House mass to Handpick favored reporters to observe the President – and to exclude anyone whose coverage of which the administration may not like – is an attempt to undermine the public to the most powerful information.”
The post has requested comment from the White House.
Since the early 1900s, the Association of Correspondents of the White House – consisting of journalists from the main news organizations – has been responsible for determining which media are gaining access to cover the president.
Members choose representatives who make decisions regarding upholstery arrangements and covering press pools.
However, that system changed on Tuesday when Leavitt stated that the administration would take responsibility for deciding which reporters could cover the president closer.
“A group of DC -based journalists, the White House correspondent association, has long dictated which journalists should ask questions from the President of the United States,” Leavitt said, adding: “No more.”
It framed the movement as a shift towards democratization of access to the press.
“Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving power to people. Speaking forward, the ‘White House press’ pool will be determined by the White House press team,” she said, stressing that inheritance plugs would not be excluded, but that the decisions of the approach would now rest with the administration.
Baker responded with another sharp criticism, warning that the mass was intended to prevent herself in question.
“President President of both parties returning generations agreed on the principle that a president does not choose the press bodies allowed in the room to ask questions,” he wrote.
“Trump has just stated that he will.”
Despite the change, Baker insisted that journalists will continue to hold the administration responsible.
“None of these will stop the professional media from covering this president in the same full, fair, harsh and vague way we always have,” he said.
“Government’s efforts to punish disappointed organizations will not stop independent journalism.”
Traditionally, the White House press pool has included reporters from wire services such as Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg – along with representatives from television, printing and radio, as well as photographers.
Shake-up followed a recent controversy in which the Trump administration removed a PA reporter and photographer from the President’s journey to Mar-a-Lago and Miami to refuse the news agency to use the favorite term “Gulf of America”, instead of the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the open places, no replacement was assigned, emphasizing the escalation tensions between the administration and the press.
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Image Source : nypost.com