STATEMENTS FROM NEWS ORGS EXCLUDED – POLITICO, John Harris and Carrie Budoff Brown: “We’ve reached out to the White House, and rest assured that we plan to very vigorously assert and defend an independent media’s right to cover the institution of the Presidency. Selectively excluding news organizations from White House briefings is misguided and our expectation is that this action will not be repeated. We have one of the largest teams in Washington covering this White House—a major editorial and financial commitment on behalf of our audience. This commitment is an enduring one, and our coverage of the Trump Administration will of course continue without interruption.” --WASHPOST, Marty Baron: “It’s appalling that the White House would exclude news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, and BuzzFeed from its publicly announced briefings. This is an undemocratic path that the administration is traveling. There is nothing to be gained from the White House restricting the public’s access to information. We are currently evaluating what our response will be if this sort of thing happens again." – Marty Baron, Washington Post. --NYT, Dean Baquet: “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” --BUZZFEED: “While we strongly object to the White House’s apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like, we won’t let these latest antics distract us from continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively.” --CNN: “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House. Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting, regardless.” --LATIMES is selling a t-shirt: “You can shut us out you can’t shut us up.” http://bit.ly/2lkTRy0 NEWS ORGANIZATIONS THAT WERE INVITED -- WSJ: “The Wall Street Journal strongly objects to the White House’s decision to bar certain media outlets from today’s gaggle. Had we known at the time, we would not have participated and we will not participate in such closed briefings in the future.” --AP: “The AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible.” --BLOOMBERG, John Micklethwait: “I don’t believe that the White House’s decision to exclude major news organizations is in the best interest of keeping the public informed, so in the future we will not participate in exclusionary briefings of the sort that happened today.” .