Jim Acosta Calls On Press To ‘Band Together’ And ‘Refuse To Cover’ Trump Until He Backs Down From AP Ban
Jim Acosta called on media outlets to “band together” and resist President Donald Trump’s decision to ban the Associated Press for ignoring his demand they alter their editorial guidance — even suggesting a coverage boycott.
Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day changing the name of The Gulf of Mexico to The Gulf of America — an edict with which several organizations have begun to comply.
But the AP has thus far resisted, and last week Trump punished them for it by banning the wire service from several White House events — a move that drew widespread condemnation. Over the weekend, the White House doubled down by attacking the AP Style Guide.
On an edition of his Substack video podcast The Jim Acosta Show last week, Acosta ridiculed Trump’s ban, telling viewers “The president of United States should not be in the business of punishing news organizations for refusing to be red-pilled.”
He added “It’s only the Gulf of America if you surrender yourself to Trump’s warped imagination,” calling it “goofy” and “nutty.”
“The dispute is over whether we’re going to just surrender ourself to the warped imagination of the man in the Oval Office. We are just not going to do that,” Acosta concluded.
On Monday morning, Acosta dropped a lengthy commentary urging media outlets and reporters to do more, and comparing the situation to his own case against Trump. In 2018. the then-first-term president lost a court battle when his administration tried to ban Acosta from the White House briefing room.
Acosta wrote:
As I found covering the first Trump White House, this is more than just another case of the president and his team being petty and vindictive. It’s also an effort designed to divide the D.C. press corps. Unfortunately, some news outlets have adopted the “Gulf of America” name change. As has Google, deservedly inviting scorn from the search engine’s users. Kudos to the federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for keeping the gulf’s proper name on its web site. NOAA
More to the point, it is crucial for news outlets to unite in opposition to any attempts by the administration to harm individual journalists and their organizations. The White House Correspondents Association’s president, Eugene Daniels released a statement in support of the AP, saying “the White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news.” WHCA on AP
Reporters and their bosses, however, need to do more. For starters, the AP should consider challenging the White House harassment of its reporters in court. News outlets then must rally to the cause, by offering supportive statements to the court hearing the case, writing op-Ed’s backing the AP, and, if necessary, refusing to cover presidential movements in solidarity, until Trump backs down.
Watch above via The Jim Acosta Show and read the full commentary here.
