Trump strikes against media

 NBC News - Blocking reporters from covering news events at the Oval Office. Ousting journalists from their working spaces in the Pentagon. Investigating public media companies that are often the targets of conservative attacks.

In the three weeks since he returned to the White House, President Donald Trump and his administration have moved beyond his usual anti-news media rhetoric to take a variety of actions that have limited some outlets’ access while hitting others with lawsuits and directives that critics say are naked attempts to bend news coverage to his will. 

“I don’t know if Trump himself has a ‘game plan’ per se, but it is clear that the overall picture is of an Administration that disdains a free press,” Rebecca Hamilton, a law professor at American University, said in an email. “Their view — and this is evident from Trump’s rhetoric, his prior lawsuits, the Pentagon office space memo, and the FCC investigations — is that any media outlets that don’t align themselves with Trump’s agenda are the enemy. This reflects a fundamental disrespect for the principles underlying a democratic commitment to a free press.”

In what may be the most glaring example of that, Associated Press reporters were blocked from covering Trump at White House events for two days in a row after the AP continued to refer to the body of water just south of the United States as the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of America, the new name Trump gave it in one of many executive orders he has signed since he took office. The AP Stylebook, which many news outlets use, including NBC News, published an update two days after Trump renamed the gulf on Jan. 21 that said the AP will continue calling it the Gulf of Mexico “while  acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”