WASHINGTON — The White House press office on Friday evening announced new rules to yank reporters’ press badges and said that all journalists who currently have one will have to reapply by July 31.
The rules usher in a new era by closing a legal loophole that shielded journalists from retribution in the past.
Federal courts said the White House couldn’t suspend reporters’ badges under former President Donald Trump because the lack of formal rules warning of the possibility deprived journalists of due process.
The new rules serve as a warning and include vague standards to justify enforcement.
The announcement just two days after World Press Freedom Day also outlines stricter policies for getting press badges, known as hard passes, and was met with unease in part due to the ill-defined rules for what conduct could result in getting reporters banished.
The move is widely believed to be spurred by interest in stripping African journalist Simon Ateba of his access to the briefing room after a series of disruptions, though people involved in discussions said that White House staff had talked about making changes even before Ateba became a minor celebrity.
“The White House expects that all hard pass holders will act in a professional manner while on White House grounds by respecting their colleagues, White House employees, and guests; observing stated restrictions on access to areas of the White House or credentialed events; and not impeding events or briefings on campus,” the notice said.
“Absent security concerns involving the United States Secret Service or other exigent circumstances, the White House will provide a written warning to you if your conduct violates these expectations. Subsequent violations may lead to the suspension or revocation of your hard pass, following notice and an opportunity to respond.”
To get a press badge, journalists whose IDs have been auto-renewed since 2017 must now submit a letter from their news outlet verifying six criteria, including their “full-time employment with an organization whose principal business is news dissemination.”
Freelancers “will need letters from two news organizations describing your affiliation, or, if you freelance primarily for one organization, a letter from that organization describing the extent and duration of your relationship with the organization,” the notice said.
Applicants also must provide a professional or personal DC-area address and “[h]ave accessed the White House campus at least once during the prior six months for work, or have proof of employment within the last three months to cover the White House.”
Journalists must be assigned to regularly cover the White House, submit to a background check and have “[a]ccreditation by a press gallery in either the Supreme Court, U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives.”
Such third-party accreditation historically was used to screen out reporters for shady or fictitious news outlets.
Ateba, who reports for subscription-based Today News Africa, had attracted notice by saying on TV that he hasn’t collected a salary, and his detractors speculated that he may not be able to satisfy some criteria, such as holding a Capitol Hill press badge.
Ateba reacted to the new rules by tweeting, “How can a guy come from Africa and you have to change the rules because of him?”
Ateba said that he’s confident that “I qualify for all those things as we just filed our taxes, are registered with the District of Columbia and have our address in DC. I studied journalism in college, received two degrees, have only worked as a journalist and trained countless people. I also attend briefings religiously and do not have a second job.”
It’s unclear if anyone other than Ateba is at risk of losing their badge.
Brian Karem, a veteran journalist who has covered the White House since the Reagan administration, said it’s unclear what enforcement will look like and “if it becomes restrictive to the point where someone who thinks differently than the president isn’t allowed in, then that would be a problem.”
Karem in 2019 had his badge suspended by the Trump White House for 30 days following heated words with Trump ally Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden. Gorka called Karem a “punk” and Karem said, “we can go outside and have a long conversation.”
He won at the federal district and appeals court levels — following a similarly successful lawsuit by CNN’s Jim Acosta, who had his badge yanked after refusing to surrender a microphone at a press conference.
“The White House can rest assured that principles of due process do not limit its authority to maintain
order and decorum at White House events by, for example, ordering the immediate removal of rogue, mooning journalists,” the federal appeals court ruled in Karem’s case in 2020.
“We hold only that to ‘punish’ Karem… the White House was required to provide fair notice of ‘the magnitude of the sanction that . . . might [be] impose[d],’ …. [and] the White House may promulgate such sanctions any time it wishes, but, until then, due process precludes the White House from ‘punish[ing]’ Karem as it did here,” the ruling said.
Karem, who writes for Salon, said that he supports returning to old press-badge standards to ensure that lobbyists and foreign agents aren’t among the accredited press, but that journalists should not be targeted for shouting questions or being, in the eyes of presidential aides, rude.
“I doubt they want to go down a road the Trump administration traveled and lost in court. But we’ll have to see what they mean specifically,” Karem said.
“If you’re banning reporters because you don’t like their questions or you think they’re rude, then that’s a problem. And they’ll lose.”
The appeals court in Karem’s case suggested he might not have violated rules even if they had existed, writing, “In the context of a White House press corps described as an ‘unruly mob’… Karem’s behavior was not so outrageous as to bring into fair contemplation the unprecedented sanction visited on him.”
A White House official defended the new policies, telling The Post: “This has been thoughtfully considered for more than a year. We worked hard to be responsive to needs and feedback of journalists covering the White House.”
“As we return to these prior criteria, which help ensure hard passes are in the hands of reporters who need regular access to campus as part of their duties, we are providing a nearly 3-month window for reporters to turn in their applications and reach out with any questions. The criteria will apply evenly to everyone,” the official said.
However, in a worrying sign, the Biden press office has aggressively prescreened reporters allowed into indoor events for the duration of Biden’s presidency, claiming dubious spacing restraints despite often plentiful seating to accommodate all journalists on campus.
The same reporters and outlets generally are discriminated against and no objective criteria for selection has ever been explained to leaders of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
In June 2022, 73 journalists representing nearly two-thirds of briefing room seats signed a letter demanding the end of the mysterious prescreening process for events in venues like the East Room, which under past presidents were open to all reporters interested in attending.
But the unprecedented access restrictions have remained in place, though at times more zealously pursued than others.
Periodically, the Secret Service has asked the press office to cut back on the number of badges issued, resulting in action to pare down the list — in 2019, for example, the Trump administration announced a loosely enforced rule requiring reporters to be present at the White House on 50% of days, a standard few would meet.
That motivation does not appear to be at play with the latest changes.
