Showing posts with label Free Press Act bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Press Act bill. Show all posts

Saturday, July 15, 2017

New Bill Aims To Prevent White House From Dodging The Free Press; HuffPost, July 13, 2017

Kaeli Subberwal, HuffPost; New Bill Aims To Prevent White House From Dodging The Free Press

"A Connecticut representative has introduced a new bill Thursday that would require the White House to hold at least two televised press briefings per week, in response to the Trump administrations’s recent restrictions on press access.

“The Free Press Act,” sponsored by Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), comes in the wake of a series of White House actions that limit the media’s access to the executive. The White House has repeatedly prohibited news outlets from televising White House press briefings, and has increasingly communicated with reporters in restricted settings shielded from public view...

Himes noted that he did not expect the bill to garner much support from the Republican majority, but that he would keep pushing it.

“While a Republican might say, gosh this feels like it’s anti-Trump, it’s actually pro-transparency, it’s pro-democracy, and it would apply equally to future Democratic presidents as it does to this Republican president,” he said.

“When you’re talking about something as important as White House policy, I think it’s really important that American citizens can at least feel like they were in the room.”"