Washington, Feb 25: The recent White House move to block several press personnels from attending the off camera press briefings has enraged the press community across America even as the Trump administration hand picked the journalists who could attend the press briefing. 

CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Politico, BuzzFeed, the BBC and the Guardian were excluded from the meeting, which was held on Friday in White House press secretary Sean Spicer's office. The meeting, which is known as a gaggle, was held in lieu of the daily televised "Question and Answer" session in the White House briefing room.
 
When reporters from these news organisations tried to enter Spicer's office, they were told they could not attend because they were not on the list of attendees. In a brief statement defending the move, administration spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the White House "had the pool there so everyone would be represented and get an update from us today".
 
The White House press pool usually includes representatives from one television outlet, one radio outlet and one print outlet, as well as reporters from a few wire services. In this case, four of the five major television networks — NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News — were invited and attended the meeting, while only CNN was blocked.
 
"This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House and if this is how they will retaliate to facts being reported then we will keep reporting the truth regardless," CNN said in a statement. 
 
The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said: "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 organisations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest."
 
The White House press office had informed reporters earlier that the traditional, on-camera press briefing would be replaced by a gaggle in Spicer's office, reporters in attendance said.

 Asked during the gaggle whether CNN and The New York Times were blocked because the administration was unhappy with their reporting, Spicer responded: "We had it as pool, and then we expanded it, and we added some folks to come cover it. It was my decision to expand the pool."