Steven Portnoy, ABC News national correspondent Interview

Steven Portnoy joined Mendte in the Morning to talk about a federal judge in Washington D.C. ordering that the Associated Press be given back its access to President Trump’s events.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining us right now on the phone is Stephen Portnoy,
the ABC News national correspondent in Washington. The big story, Stephen,
we're talking about also this morning is that federal judge
in Washington has now ruled for the Associated Press in
its fight to restore access to the President Trump's events.
Trump appointed judge Trevor mcfatten important to point that out

(00:21):
that it is a Trump appointed judge on Tuesday, said
the White House's actions have been brazen, based entirely on
the AP's editorial decision to continue using the name Gulf
of Mexico instead of Golf of America. Well, you and
I both journalists. I took a lot of offense at
banning the AP from the White House. How do you
feel about this decision?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, look, I mean how do I personally feel as
a colleague of my friends in the AP.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm happy for them.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I mean, look, the fact is, what Trevor mcfatten said
yesterday is that when the White House opens its doors
to some journalists cannot exclude others based on their reporting.
That the First Amendment protects the right of free speech
and the free press, and the government that is, the
President of the United States, can't discriminate once he opens

(01:15):
are what the doors, So what's called a non public
forum such as his office, he can't pick and choose
amongst the reporters who would be in there based on
how they report things, which is a pretty important decision. Now,
you know, the other side might argue, well, it's his office,
shouldn't he have the right to invite people. Well, well

(01:37):
that's right, and the back the bottom line is, you know,
it's it's not Trump Tower. This is the White House
and it is a space that is when the president opens,
it open to journalists. And look, this is why for
more than one hundred years these decisions have not been
made by the government, but instead by an association of journalists,

(01:58):
the White House Correspondent Association, which you may know I
once less as its president. And so the bottom line
is the White House, over the last couple of months
has decided to take that responsibility onto itself in constituting
the pool of reporters, the small group that goes into
the tight spaces such as the Oval Office, of the

(02:18):
Roosevelt Room, the Cabinet Room, places where the entire White
House Press corps hundreds of people can't fit. But what's
interesting in this case is even in the East Room,
the largest room in the executive mansion, where the President
had an event just yesterday, in many of these cases,
the AP has been frozen out of that too, And
for no other reason, the judge said, than this Golf

(02:40):
of America Golf of Mexico spat, which means that it
was exclusively about the editorial decisions of a news organization.
And the First Amendment protects the right of editors and
publishers to make their own decisions free from government interference
or government retribution.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
And that's what he says, we saw in this case.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, and you know, Larry Larry, Hello Steve, and the Steve.
Excuse I'm saying Larry because I'm men for Larry Men. Yeah,
there you go. But Stephen, you know what gets me
is and I'm more of a libertarian than anything else.
And truthfully, if you don't agree with the Associated Press
calling it the Gulf of Mexico, then don't read stuff
from the Associated Press. That's America's that's your option, right.
You don't have to consume the news from the Associated Press. Now,

(03:22):
from a journalist perspective, we all rely on the Associated
Press when we can't be at all the different events.
And I worked for ABC, NBC, and CBS and Fox
at different times in my career. I was with ABC
twenty years. You know, if ABC couldn't make an event
or didn't get a certain sound, but you relied on
the Associated Press for it. So to have them banned
from the White House not only seems petty, but it

(03:42):
really impacts news coverage for all of us.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
And what the judge found is that the AP was
particularly harmed by not being there. You know, the average
person might say, hey, you know everything streams online now
and I see it on television. Why does any one
reporter need to be in there? The judgment out of
his way, and I was really impressed to read it,
to get inside the business and the you know, sort
of the anatomy of how news reporting happens, and you

(04:07):
could appreciate it can and it goes to the point.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
You just made. The idea is that each of.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Us who work in these newsrooms have who are charged
with the responsibility of helping the public understand what's happening
in real time. Right we can all look on Twitter.
Every one of us has that power now in our pockets.
To figure things out. That's great, But when reporters are present,
they can see things that you can't see on your phone.
They can observe and by the way, also ask questions

(04:35):
and interact and feed things out. And what the judge
found is that the ap was put a significant disadvantage
relative to its competitors and colleagues in the White House
Press Corps, and that simply wasn't fair and it wasn't
ultimately constitutional. Now the judge has stayed his ruling until
Sunday to give the administration the opportunity to appeal to

(04:59):
the d C Circuit Court above him. I will tell
you he's the President's not likely to find a friendly
audience at the d C Circuit. Just yesterday, as a
matter of fact, the High Court ruled again. The appellate court,
the intermediate Court ruled against Simon A.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Taba. You may remember him.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
He was.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
A bit of a nuisance to the Biden.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
White House because he would shout out questions over colleagues
in the briefings, and ultimately that became a problem for
us in the press courts because it interrupted the flow
of the briefings. But beyond that, he alleged that the
Biden White House took away his hard pass because it
was part of an overall sort of recasting of the

(05:39):
hard pass policy, and he alleged that he was individually targeted,
along with several hundred other people, sufficed to say, he
brought this case in court, and just yesterday, just yesterday
before Judge McFadden's ruling, a three judge panel of the
d C. Circuit ruled that Simon and Taba his constitution
rights were not violated and that the First Amendment protect

(06:00):
the right of reporters to be present. But it also
allows for the White House to rely on and this
is a bit inside the weeds, the standing committees of
journalists up on Capitol Hill who assess who is entitled
to a Congressional credential to be able to cover Congress
and walk the halls of the capital freely without.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Any kind of special escorts.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
And it's an arrangement here in Washington, DC that goes
back to the eighteen seventies, and it looks at ownership
and independence of newsrooms and a whole variety of other factors.
And the White House has relied on that for many
decades and now well right exactly and Ultimately, the Circuit
Court upheld that. So the idea that the Circuit Court

(06:44):
is going to be unfriendly to the AP in a
case like this, I think I think is unlikely.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
See and Stephen, look for those saying, well, the president
can said what he wants and we are constitutionally protected
in the media for that. That's why we have freedom
of the press, and thank goodness we have it, because
that's why we have the country and the freedoms we have.
We're out of time. Stephen portnoa ABC News national correspondent
in Washington, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Always good to have you on.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
All right, my friend,