Did the White House Correspondents’ Association Just Lose All Its Power?

The White House’s decision to oversee which outlets get into the presidential press pools leaves the media with little recourse — except for planning dinners.

Reporters raise their hands to ask a question at a White House briefing.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The White House announced Tuesday that administration officials, not the White House Correspondents’ Association, will choose which reporters participate in pooled coverage, ramping up its aggressive stance toward reporters and essentially daring the press corps to make a move.

But what can the WHCA, which has handled the media’s access to the president for more than a century, do to fight back?

“I don’t see the genie going back in the bottle,” Stewart Powell, the organization’s president from 1998 to 1999, told NOTUS, adding that he saw little recourse for the WHCA in its current standoff with the administration.