Last month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre threatened to end a press conference after a question from one conservative journalist.
Now, the White House is going a step further.
President Joe Biden’s White House issued an open letter threatening to bar Africa News Today reporter Simon Ateba from the press room.
The letter went on to issue an ultimatum… and it threatened to remove Ateba in time-out.
“If you continue to impede briefings or events by shouting over your colleagues who have been called on for a question, even after you have been asked to stop by a White House employee, then your hard pass may be suspended or revoked, following notice and an opportunity to respond,” the letter said.
Back in June, Jean-Pierre was bristling at Ateba’s questions.
“If this continues, we’re going to end the press briefing,” Jean-Pierre told Ateba at the time. “You’re being incredibly rude. Simon, stop.”
Ateba interrupted, “Are you going to take questions from me because you’ve been discriminating against me for the past nine months?”
In an open letter, the White House defended its threat to stop the press conference.
“The White House recognizes that members of the press often raise their voices or shout questions at press briefings or events,” the letter states.
“Ordinarily such shouting stops when a reporter is called on for a question, and the briefing or event is able to continue. Continued interruptions are different; they prevent journalists from asking questions or administration officials and guests from responding. The Press Secretary’s only option in response to such disruptions is to stop the briefing or event, which is to the detriment of all journalists.”
In 2019, former President Donald Trump’s White House suspended a Playboy reporter’s pass after an altercation at the Rose Garden. A federal court ordered Trump’s White House to un-ban the reporter, and it called for the White House to provide more specific guidelines about offenses punishable by a suspension.
“Without any contextual guideposts, ‘professionalism,’ standing alone, remains too murky to provide fair notice here,” the judge wrote at the time. “Some might think the temporary suspension of a single reporter’s press pass to be a relatively modest exercise of such control… the conferral of White House hard passes is no mere triviality.”
It’s not the only tension the White House has had with reporters. On Thursday, President Joe Biden snapped at a Finnish reporter for questioning the U.S.’s committment to NATO.
“Let me be clear,” Biden said at a press conference. “I didn’t say we didn’t guarantee — we couldn’t guarantee the future. You can’t tell me whether you’re gonna be able to go home tonight. No one can be sure what they’re gonna do… I’m saying, as sure as anything could possibly be said about American foreign policy, we will stay connected to NATO.”
The Horn editorial team