Valley Public Radio and a host of nonprofits brought National Public Radio’s Tamara Keith — a Hanford native — to talk about her experience as the senior White House correspondent and former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Keith served as president of the association in 2022 and 2023.

A packed audience at Fresno City College’s Old Administration Building on Wednesday heard from Keith. The Maddy Institute, Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, and the Central Valley Community Foundation sponsored the event.

While Keith said she had a speech prepped, the decision by President Donald Trump to control which news agencies get into the press pool caused a last-minute rewrite.

The move, she says, upends 100 years of tradition and threatens the independence of the White House Press Corps. She called the decision an “existential threat” to the First Amendment and a free press.

President’s rarely like their press coverage, she said, but they’ve never tried to control the press pool.

“When a president chooses his press corps, that’s not a good sign,” Keith said.

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Newsmax and Fox News Side With Associated Press

Since its inception, the White House Correspondents Association has chosen which news agencies accompany the president, something Keith said is essential to a free press.

That changed when Trump decided to ban the Associated Press from the press pool after the wire service decided not to use Gulf of American in its style guide, which many news agencies, including GV Wire, utilize.

The AP did abide by Trump’s decision to rename Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley, saying he had full control to do so. The agency said as multiple nations surround the Gulf of Mexico, Trump could not unilaterally make that choice.

Newsmax and Fox News — agencies seen as more favorable to the president — signed onto a letter objecting to the ban.

Keith said that with Trump setting such a precedent, it opened the door to a Democratic president to freeze out conservative media.

Trump later said that his administration would pick agencies in the pool on a rotating basis.

“The president’s first administration can be described as blowing past long-standing norms,” Keith said. “The president’s second administration can be described by blowing past laws.”

‘Availability Isn’t Transparency’

Keith covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump for NPR. As a member of the press pool, her audio gets distributed to radio outlets globally. The TV outlets do the same for that medium, a reason Trump kept the major TV outlets a permanent fixture in the pool, she said.

During Biden’s administration, she recalled going to Tel Aviv on Air Force One shortly after the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. Reporters got a sense of the damage and access to military officials. But with the region an active war zone, news members and the president did not stay long.

On the way back, they stopped in Germany to refuel. While Keith thought she would be able to get some sleep after a long journey, White House staff suddenly came in to let reporters know they would be getting a “visitor.”

Biden came out to answer questions and so, in her pajamas, she recorded the president’s responses to press questions.  And in the few minutes before they took off, she was able to upload the audio and distribute it to the nation.

Keith did not spare Biden, either. During her time as president of the correspondents’ association, they fought with his administration over lack of access to the president.

But she said even though Trump makes himself more available than any other president she’s known, that doesn’t mean reporters get the information they need.

“Availability isn’t transparency,” she said.

First Amendment Doesn’t Guarantee White House Access

While the association has begun working on litigation, she said lawsuits wouldn’t be a “slam dunk.” Much of what reporters want isn’t written into law but are rather long-standing norms. The First Amendment doesn’t guarantee access to the Oval Office or a seat on Air Force One.

Keith said Trump has kept the Department of Government Efficiency under tight wraps. Insiders are beginning to send documents to reporters, though, and they’re working to uncover what the quasi-department is doing.

In addition, she spoke about many young people turning to social media to get their news rather than from traditional sources.

“Unless journalists can figure out how to turn this around, the future is very grim,” she said.