By Joshua Arnold

The White House must restore to the Associated Press (AP) its former access to the Oval Office and Air Force One, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. The AP lost its access in February when the White House objected to its decision to describe the body of water to America’s southeast as the Gulf of Mexico, instead of the Gulf of America.

After President Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the AP declined to alter its terminology. “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” announced its updated style guidelines. “The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

“The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America,” White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich had responded. “This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation. While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One.”

The federal judge took a slightly different view of what the law requires. “Under the First Amendment,” ruled Judge Trevor McFadden, of the U.S. District Court, “if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.”

A graduate of Wheaton University who attends a gospel-preaching Anglican church in the D.C. area, McFadden was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2017.

During his eight years on the court, McFadden has issued numerous high-profile rulings, which conservatives would generally applaud. He rejected a move by House Democrats to block Trump’s border wall construction, blocked a D.C. law allowing minors to get vaccinated without parental consent, and criticized the disproportionate prosecution of J6 defendants, noting, “the US Attorney’s Office would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in the city.”

McFadden’s AP ruling made clear that “it does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer.”

However, McFadden found “that the Government has singled out the AP because of its refusal to update the Gulf’s name in its Stylebook, an influential writing and editing guide,” and that this constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. He cited multiple examples of administration officials telling the AP their access depended on their renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

“This decision is a clear victory for press freedom,” said Aaron Terr, public advocacy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The episode echoes an incident from 2009, when the Obama White House “tried to exclude Fox News — alone among the five White House ‘pool’ networks — from interviewing executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg.” The incident came shortly after White House Communications Director Anita Dunn declared that Fox News was not a legitimate news organization and that, “we’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent.”

The Biden White House had a different strategy to keep the president sheltered from potentially hostile reporters: in addition to censoring other viewpoints behind the scenes, they barely let Biden speak to the media at all. The U.S. Presidency Project calculates that Biden gave 37 total press conferences, an average of 9.25 per year, the first president since the first Iraq War to give less than 20 press conferences per year. During Biden’s last year in office, they record that the president gave three joint press conferences, one in primetime, and no other conferences with the media, for a total of four.

While the AP’s lawsuit challenging its exclusion proceeded, the Trump White House took steps to dramatically reshape the way an administration deals with the media. For nearly a century, access to the presidential press pool was determined by a journalistic association, of which the Associated Press was a founding and privileged member. However, two weeks after restricting the AP’s access, the Trump White House assumed the power to screen media for itself.

McFadden’s ruling did not address the White House’s decision to screen the media outlets it permits for itself.

“The court held tight to the basic First Amendment principle that the government can’t punish journalists just because it doesn’t like their views or reporting,” said Terr. “The AP is free to use its own stylebook — no pre-approval from the White House required.”

Preserving this principle is important because the occupant of the White House — and often, the party of the occupant — changes at regular intervals. If presidents were allowed to tightly clamp down on unfriendly media with every change in administration, it would not only wreak havoc on the media landscape, but it would also shut down a measure of debate, accountability, and transparency that makes the American people more informed.

If the White House ever gained more power over the press, it would be tempted to use that power to censor, or at least chill, what the press reported, and it would certainly try to get away with more borderline behavior. Readers may not be overly concerned about, say, President Trump taking such liberties (although maybe they should be), but recall that before Trump was President Biden, and before Trump’s previous term was President Obama, and sometime after Trump the Democrats are likely to win back the White House again.

It is unwise, when in power, to implement rules you don’t want to live under when out of power. In that way, the First Amendment freedom of the press protects all sides.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.