“We’re going to aggressively push back,” Mr. Spicer said, according to a recording of the session provided by a reporter who was allowed to attend. “We’re just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there.”

Public officials are not required to give reporters perfectly equal access, of course, and exclusive interviews and selective leaks are commonplace and lawful. But First Amendment experts said the allocation of government resources like press passes and access to public forums like news conferences must be based on neutral criteria rather than discrimination based on what the journalists had written.

Lots of interactions between the government and the news media do not implicate those kinds of First Amendment concerns. In 2006, for instance, a federal appeals court ruled that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland did not violate the First Amendment rights of two Baltimore Sun reporters by prohibiting state employees from talking to them because he was unhappy with their reporting.

“It is common knowledge,” Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., “that reporting is highly competitive, and reporters cultivate access — sometimes exclusive access — to sources, including government officials. Public officials routinely select among reporters when granting interviews or providing access to nonpublic information.”

But press credentials and seats at government news conferences are a different matter, according to a 1977 decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“White House press facilities having been made publicly available as a source of information for newsmen, the protection afforded news gathering under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press, requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons,” Judge Carl E. McGowan wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “Not only newsmen and the publications for which they write, but also the public at large have an interest protected by the First Amendment in assuring that restrictions on news gathering be no more arduous than necessary, and that individual newsmen not be arbitrarily excluded from sources of information.”