Overview
- A memo effective immediately requires journalists to have an appointment to enter Upper Press (Room 140), where the press secretary and communications director have offices.
- Reporters may continue to engage with press aides in the Lower Press area outside the Briefing Room.
- The restriction was circulated by Communications Director Steven Cheung and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
- Cheung later alleged some reporters secretly recorded or ambushed officials in the area, a claim not accompanied by publicly presented evidence in the reports.
- The White House Correspondents’ Association denounced the move as limiting transparency, noting it follows recent Pentagon access rules that many outlets refused to accept.