In December, we asked, “Can the White House ‘Mean Girl’” media be reformed?” We were looking at at journalist Mike Cernovich’s comments on the way that the White House press corps controls national political news in the United States:

The White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) has the power to control seat assignments and credentialing. When you walk inside the briefing room, it’s not first come, first served for seating. Privileged members of regime media are sat in the front row. Independent media, if they can even attend the briefing with a “day pass,” must stand in the aisles.

The WHCA controls who gets full-time passes (called hard passes). These are tightly regulated, and its used as a way to shut out reporters who do not go along with the establishment propaganda.

“How Trump can Reform the “Mean Girls” White House Press Corps,” November 27, 2024

Someone may have been listening to him or otherwise thinking along the lines of opening it up a bit. From at Dominick Mastrangelo at The Hill, we learn of proposed changes— but from a far more negative perspective:

“It would be a total mess,” one White House reporter told The Hill this week. “I would expect people would probably boycott the briefings, though that would put certain outlets in a tough spot deciding if they want to go along with what the Trump people are trying to pull.”

Traditionally, the first row of the James Brady Briefing Room has been occupied by the four major networks of NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox; The Associated Press; CNN; and Reuters.

Other larger outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CBS News Radio, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Bloomberg have seats in the second row, while some news organizations do not have formal seats in the room. The Hill has a seat in the fourth row.

“White House press corps recoils at Trump’s threat to shake up briefing room ,” December 4, 2024

Back then, incoming Trump administration media officials denied any big changes were afoot.

Media consumers may well want to ask, in an age when how we get news is fundamentally changing, why are seats for specific traditional media seemingly engraved in stone?