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		</div><p>The White House has barred several media outlets from a press conference held by President Trump&#8217;s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer.</p>
<p>Journalists from the BBC, New York Times, CNN, The LA Times, BuzzFeed News and others were not allowed into a scheduled briefing.</p>
<p>Instead, Mr Spicer selected a handful of right-wing outlets including Breitbart, Fox News, ABC and the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Others from Time Magazine and the Associated Press who had been due to attend decided to boycott the meeting in protest at the exclusion of their colleagues.</p>
<p>&#8220;The AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible,&#8221; Lauren Easton, the AP&#8217;s director of media relations, said in a statement.</p>
<p>The White House said it felt &#8220;everyone was represented&#8221; by those in the pool and the invited organisations.<br />
&#8220;We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool. Nothing more than that,&#8221; said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.</p>
<p>When asked by a reporter whether he was playing favourites, Mr Spicer said the White House had &#8220;shown an abundance of accessibility&#8221;, according to an audio recording later circulated by the pool.<br />
In a statement, White House Correspondents&#8217; Association President Jeff Mason said the group was &#8220;protesting strongly&#8221;.</p>
<p>When Mr Spicer was asked by a reporter at the gaggle whether he was playing favourites, he said he &#8220;disagreed with the premise of the question&#8221;, according to the audio.<br />
&#8220;We&#8217;ve brought more reporters into this process.</p>
<p>&#8220;And the idea that every time that every single person can&#8217;t get their question answered or fit in a room that we&#8217;re excluding people.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve actually gone above and beyond with making ourselves, our team, and our briefing room more accessible than probably any prior administration. And so I think you can take that to the bank.<br />
&#8220;We do what we can to accommodate the press. </p>
<p>I think we&#8217;ve gone above and beyond when it comes to accessibility, and openness and getting folks, our officials, our team.&#8221;</p>
<p>Reaction from the barred outlets and others was swift.<br />
Davan Maharaj, editor in chief and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, called the newspaper&#8217;s exclusion &#8220;unfortunate&#8221;.</p>
<p>&#8220;The public has a right to know, and that means being informed by a variety of news sources, not just those filtered by the White House press office in hopes of getting friendly coverage,&#8221; Mr Maharaj said in a statement.</p>
<p>&#8220;Regardless of access, the Times will continue to report on the Trump administration without fear or favour.&#8221;</p>
<p>Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said that &#8220;nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties.</p>
<p>&#8220;We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organisations.<br />
&#8220;Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.&#8221;<br />
CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper took aim at the White House as he kicked off The Lead With Jake Tapper.</p>
<p>&#8220;A White House that has had some difficulty telling the truth and that has seemed to have trouble getting up to speed on the basic competent functioning of government, and a president who seems particularly averse to any criticism and has called the press the enemies of the American people, they&#8217;re taking the next step in attempting to avoid checks and balances and accountability.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not acceptable. In fact, it&#8217;s petulant, and indicative of a lack of basic understanding of how an adult White House functions,&#8221; Mr Tapper said.</p>
<p>The Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned the move by the White House.<br />
&#8220;We are concerned by the decision to bar reporters from a press secretary briefing,&#8221; CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement.</p>
<p>&#8220;The US should be promoting press freedom and access to information.&#8221;<br />
Elsewhere, it is reported that Trump&#8217;s Chief of Staff privately asked the FBI to prevent any news stories coming out about Trump campaigners&#8217; communication with Russia.</p>
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