White House bars CNN, New York Times, other outlets from press gaggle

On February 24, 2017, the White House barred the New York Times, CNN, Politico, BuzzFeed News, and the Los Angeles Times from an informal press gaggle held in Press Secretary Sean Spicer's office in lieu of the televised daily briefing, while granting access to Breitbart News, One America News Network, and the Washington Times. The Associated Press and Time magazine, though not barred, declined to attend in protest. New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet called the move unprecedented: "Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties." Spicer disputed characterizations of the move, saying, "We've brought more reporters into this process ... we're excluding people. We've actually gone above and beyond," while Sarah Sanders said the White House had simply "decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool." The exclusion came hours after Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference that certain outlets were dishonest purveyors of "fake news," and one week after he had declared major news organizations "the enemy of the American People," marking an escalation from rhetorical attacks on the press to a formal denial of access.