White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) Jeff Mason said Sunday journalists will “fight to keep the briefing room and West Wing access to senior administration officials open," and that he will meet with incoming press secretary Sean Spicer to "try to get more clarity on exactly what" the Trump administration is suggesting regarding media access to the White House, The Hill reported.
"We object strenuously to any move that would shield the president and his advisers from the scrutiny of an on-site White House press corps," Mason said in a statement released by the WHCA.
Esquire reported that the Trump administration is seriously considering evicting the press from the White House press room, where it has been for several decades, and moving it to the White House Conference Center or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.
Although some have attributed the proposal for a desire to punish an unfair press, President-elect Donald Trump's incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus insisted to ABC’s “This Week” that the reason for the proposal is merely to try and open up the possibility for more press coverage.
Priebus explained that only 49 people fit in the current facility and there were some 500 requests for last week’s press conference, so the idea arose to move to a place “where you can fit four times the amount of people in the press conference, allowing more press, more press coverage from all over the country to have those press conferences.”
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