President Donald Trump walks with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un at the start of their historic summit at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images White House limits number of U.S. journalists at Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore

The White House restricted access for American journalists to key parts of the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday, setting aside longstanding agreements with the press designed to ensure adequate coverage.

Most notably, the number of American journalists allowed to witness the meeting between Trump and Kim was limited to seven — a smaller group than would usually be present for such a summit, and one that excluded representatives from the major wire services.


The size of the group, which also included fewer TV and radio representatives than usual, appeared designed to match the number of North Korean “journalists” present, according to a press pool report, and led to tension between U.S. media and White House officials on the ground in Singapore.

Under normal circumstances, the American pool at this type of event would consist of about a dozen representatives from print, radio and TV, including reporters from The Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters. After being excluded earlier, reporters from those wire services were added for coverage of the expanded bilateral meeting that followed Trump and Kim’s first meeting, though the pool size remained tight.

At the working lunch between Trump and Kim, a Singaporean government camera and photographers were granted access, but no American members of the press were allowed to cover the event.

“We have worked very hard to provide access to the media at this event and continually expanded

coverage throughout the morning,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told POLITICO in an email.

White House Correspondents’ Association president Margaret Talev said that the White House’s decision to restrict the size of the press pool impacted coverage.

“Full pool coverage of the president in cases in which open press coverage is not possible has been a longstanding agreement between the White House and the press corps and the default position that the WHCA expected and advocated ahead of the summit,” said Talev, a Bloomberg White House reporter, in an email. “The White House's decision not to protect that standard for some key pools during the summit showed in the news coverage, with reporters and networks struggling to precisely determine what President Trump and Kim Jong Un said after the White House did not allow a properly-constituted pool in the room.”

Talev continued, “WHCA repeatedly shared our members' opposition to any moves to arbitrarily restrict pools for perhaps the most important foreign policy meeting of this presidency. While there were some full pool sprays, restrictions were placed on other pools including the bilateral and expanded bilateral meetings and an event in which the president addressed a supplementary TV camera with no editorial presence. Even as we were pleased to see a return to the tradition of an open press presidential news conference on overseas trips, our members are strongly opposed to any erosion of the standard for pools and deeply concerned about the impact that would have on the American public.”

The AP issued a statement from director of media relations Lauren Easton, who said, “AP is troubled by the decision to curb media access at the Singapore summit. It is a disservice to the public, which deserves prompt, accurate, and complete reporting on what may be one of the president’s most consequential meetings.”

Representatives from Bloomberg and Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.

Media access at high-level meetings between leaders is usually negotiated far in advance. But a week before the summit, Sanders told POLITICO that the White House was still working out the details. That uncertainty appeared to carry over to the summit itself, where a “tight pool” was designated to witness key events. North Korea has nothing like a free press, so it is unclear in exactly what function the North Korean “reporters” were serving.

When the U.S. president meets with leaders of countries with dimmer views of free speech, the American role is typically to push for more access. For instance, President Barack Obama was knocked in 2009 when he met with President Hu Jintao of China but failed to take questions alongside him. Obama was praised in 2014, though, when he insisted on an open news conference alongside Hu’s successor, President Xi Jinping. Trump was similarly criticized on his trip to China last fall when he did not take questions with Xi.

In Trump and Kim’s meeting on Tuesday, reporters were allowed access for just a few minutes at the beginning. An American reporter asked Trump how he was feeling, followed by a North Korean reporter asking a question to Kim. The media was then ushered out of the room.

