Photo by Jim Havard

Photo by Jim Havard

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer reportedly barred several major media outlets from attending a press briefing today.

According to The Hill, which was one of the banned outlets, Spicer “decided to hold an off-camera ‘gaggle’ with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.”

CNN, The New York Times, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Daily News were among the outlets not permitted, according to The Hill. Meanwhile, the doors were open to conservative publications such as Breitbart, the Washington Times, and One America News Network.

NBC, ABC, FOX, and CBS were also hand picked to attend, according to a tweet from CNN White House producer Elizabeth Landers, which adds that The Associated Press and Time boycotted the gaggle.

In December, Spicer said that although the Trump campaign restricted some news outlets on the campaign trail, he would not do that in the White House because “we have a respect for the press when it comes to the government… that is something that you can’t ban an entity from.”

But today’s exclusive briefing came hours after President Donald Trump reiterated at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he believes “the fake news is the enemy of the people… because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none.”

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said in a statement that “nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” CNN reports. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest,” Baquet continued.

The White House Correspondents’ Association board is also “protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” said Jeff Mason, the association’s president, according to The Hill. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

Filed Under: ban, media ban, press briefing, sean spicer, white house, white house press briefing,