Multiple media outlets were blocked from a White House gaggle Friday afternoon, hours after President Donald Trump again labeled the press as enemies of the American people and vowed to "do something about it."
Reporters didn’t expect the usual and more formal on-camera daily briefing from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, but did expect a more spontaneous "gaggle" with the White House’s main spokesperson at some point Friday afternoon.
Around noon, the White House sent updated guidance that the gaggle would be off-camera with an "expanded pool."
The White House emailed the selected reporters that they were okayed to attend.
NBC News was allowed into the off-camera briefing and decided to stay with the intention of sharing all newsgathering material with journalism colleagues. The "pool" was also in the room — meaning that, under a longstanding agreement, the material would be shared with all media colleagues regardless of who was physically present.
While representatives from NBC News, CBS, ABC, and FOX were allowed into the off-camera briefing, CNN was not. Hallie Jackson, who was there for NBC/MSNBC used her opportunity to ask, as did others, why some of her colleagues had been excluded.
.@AP & @TIME boycotted as a result. WH Correspondents Assn protesting. Conservative outlets Breitbart, Washington Times, @OANN allowed in — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) February 24, 2017
Buzzfeed, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the Hill and Politico were among the other outlets not allowed in to cover the gaggle, with representatives from the Associated Press and Time declining to go into the gaggle because of how it was being handled.
CNN's public relations wing tweeted that the move was an "unacceptable development by the Trump White House."
"Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like. We'll keep reporting regardless."
White House Correspondents Association President Jeff Mason emailed members that the board "is protesting strongly against how today's gaggle is being handled by the White House."
WHCA president says they are ‘protesting strongly’ against how gaggle being held pic.twitter.com/kAlVwzumR9 — Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) February 24, 2017
"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," the email read.
During the briefing in question Spicer was asked about why certain outlets were not present. He said it was because the gaggle, an info was an "expanded pool" and he made that decision.
Spicer defended the press office's decision to limit the press included in the gaggle, saying “we had a pool and then we expanded it. We added some folks to come cover it."
"We do what we can to be accessible. We do what we can to accommodate the press,” Spicer told the small group of reporters asking why other outlets were not included. "I think we have gone above and beyond when it comes to accessibility and openness and getting folks, our officials, our team. And so, respectfully I disagree with the premise of the question."
Other administrations, on occasion, excluded certain journalists in the past.
Early on in the Obama White House, the administration attempted to exclude Fox News from a press pool.
Hours earlier on Friday, Trump doubled down on his criticism of American mainstream media calling them "the enemy of the American People" during his speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. He insisted reporters stop using unnamed sources.
"They have no sources they just make them up when there are none," Trump told the at-capacity CPAC crowd which cheered in agreement. "They shouldn't be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name. Let their name be put out there."
Several media advocacy groups called Friday's exclusion of several news outlets from the press gaggle "alarming."
“President Trump's calls for an end to anonymous sources was alarming. It is not the job of political leaders to determine how journalists should conduct their work, and sets a terrible example for the rest of the world, where sources often must remain anonymous to preserve their own lives,” Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Joel Simon said in a statement. “We are concerned by the decision to bar reporters from a press secretary briefing. The U.S. should be promoting press freedom and access to information.”
Reporters Without Borders in a statement called the administration's move "completely unacceptable and undemocratic in the country of the First Amendment."
On Friday White House Press Secretary  held an informal "gaggle" press briefing but made a point of excluding certain news outlets.  The White House's decision has drawn ire from across the field, including organizations invited to the briefing, such as  and ''''.
Sean Spicer, from file.  
''The New York Times'' and CNN, as well as the BBC, '''', ''Al Jazeera'', the '''', , '''', and ''The Daily Mail'', were all barred from attending the meeting, while Reuters, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, Bloomberg, and the heavily conservative news outlets , , and '''' were admitted.  '''', the Associated Press, and some other outlets were invited to the briefing but .

Spicer held the meeting in his office rather than the usual briefing room. He told the press the smaller gathering was because Trump had already made a large speech earlier in the day. "We want to make sure we answer your questions, but we don't need to do everything on camera every day."  However, he also criticized media coverage of the Trump administration, which President Trump has cited as unfair. "We're going to aggressively push back," one reporter recorded him saying at the gaggle. "We're just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there."

This meeting took place the day after CNN issued a report claiming the White House had asked high-level employees at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to rebut a story in ''The New York Times'' about the Trump administration's alleged ties with Russia and Vladimir Putin.

"Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like. We'll keep reporting regardless," said CNN in a statement.

"Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties," said ''New York Times'' executive editor Dean Baquet. "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."

"While we strongly object to the White House's apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like," said Buzzfeed editor-in-chief , "we won't let these latest antics distract us from the work of continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively."

BBC bureau chief Paul Denahar was more formal: "We understand there may be occasions when, due to space or circumstances, the White House restricts press events to the established pool.  However, what happened today did not fit into that pattern. On this occasion selected media were allowed to attend the briefing and the selected media, including the BBC, were not."

'''' contributor David French also criticized the decision: "The only reason to exclude a news organization from a press briefing should be space available, with space allocated on a viewpoint-neutral basis. ... It's one thing to bash the press. It's another thing entirely to take steps to deny access to disfavored outlets. When it comes to access, Trump needs to be better than Obama, not worse." He combined these remarks with a discussion of the Obama administration's relationship with Fox News.

Some of the news organizations invited to Spicer's meeting also opposed the exclusion of their peers:

"Some at CNN and ''New York Times'' stood with Fox News when the Obama admin attacked us and tried to exclude us," said Fox anchor  via Twitter, "a White House gaggle should be open to all credentialed orgs."

"''The Wall Street Journal'' strongly objects to the White House's decision to bar certain media outlets from today's gaggle," added a representative for the newspaper. "Had we known at the time, we would not have participated and we will not participate in such closed briefings in the future."

The  took a milder view: "We're not happy with how things went today," said association president Jeff Mason. "I don't think that people should rush to judgment to suggest that this is the start of a big crackdown on media access."

Donald Trump has stated the mainstream media portrayed the first month of his presidency unfairly, calling some of their reports "fake news" and the press themselves the "enemy of the people" and insisting they refrain from using anonymous sources. "I'm against the people that make up stories and make up sources," he told the  in Washington D.C.

"President Trump's calls for an end to anonymous sources was alarming. It is not the job of political leaders to determine how journalists should conduct their work, and sets a terrible example for the rest of the world, where sources often must remain anonymous to preserve their own lives," said Joel Simon of the .