The Trump administration will respect the use of a protective press pool and will continue to allow the media to fly with the President on Air Force One, members of the incoming White House communications team told representatives of The White House Correspondents Association on Thursday.
The incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and incoming Communications Director Sean Spicer have indicated there will be changes to how the Trump White House interacts with the media, potentially altering the daily press briefing and which outlets sit where in the White House briefing room. But what those exact changes will be hasn't been finalized yet.
"They are looking to make some changes but I don’t think they have settled on what those changes will be," Mason told POLITICO in a brief interview. "We made clear what our priorities are in terms of access and coverage for the pool and full press corps and I think they understood our priorities."
The long-awaited meeting between the WHCA and the incoming communications team lasted two hours. It was attended by several members of the WHCA board along with Spicer, incoming White House Director of Strategic Communications and Press Director Stephanie Grisham.
"We were pleased that the Trump team made assurance that they will respect the protective pool in its current formation and with its current tradition once Donald Trump becomes president," Mason said. "Otherwise it was a lot of questions and answers on both sides. They had a lot of questions I think they were trying to inform themselves on how the press corps operates in the White House and they’re thinking through how they wan to handle a wide variety of things. It was a good exchange of views."