Washington: Several major news outlets including The New York Times, CNN and BBC were barred from attending an off-camera White House briefing, an unprecedented move that escalated tensions in the already fraught relationship between the Trump administration and the media. Hours after President Donald Trump blasted the media at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, declaring that much of the press was “the enemy of the American people”, the White House yesterday invited only a select group of conservative news organisations for the “extended press gaggle”.
The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, BuzzFeed, the BBC and the Guardian were among those excluded from the meeting, which was held in White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s office. The off-camera briefing was held in lieu of the daily televised Q-and-A session in the White House briefing room.