[guest post by Dana]

This has to be a first:

The Associated Press says the White House blocked it from covering an official event on Tuesday because it did not refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said that the White House informed the news agency that its journalists would be barred from attending President Trump’s signing of a new executive order because it had not aligned its language with Trump’s preferred name for the body of water.

Here is a statement released by the AP concerning the matter:

. . .Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.

It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.

FIRE released a statement on behalf of the AP:

Punishing journalists for not adopting state-mandated terminology is an alarming attack on press freedom. That’s viewpoint discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional.

President Trump has the authority to change how the U.S. government refers to the Gulf. But he cannot punish a news organization for using another term. The role of our free press is to hold those in power accountable, not to act as their mouthpiece. Any government efforts to erode this fundamental freedom deserve condemnation.

—Dana