Washington DC - In keeping with their recent promise to crack down on media access, President Donald Trump's administration barred several major media organizations from attending the first cabinet meeting of his second term.

According to Reuters, the White House on Wednesday denied access to one of their reporters, two more from the Huffington Post and German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, as well as a photographer from the Associated Press.

Reporters with Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News, and NPR, along with TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, were permitted.

The move comes after Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced during a press briefing on Tuesday that the press pool will now be determined by Trump's White House team, instead of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), as had been convention for almost a century.

Donald Trump Trump administration removes crucial student loan applications from DoE website

On Wednesday, three wire services – AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg News – released a joint statement in response to the announcement, pointing out that "Much of the White House coverage people see in their local news outlets, wherever they are in the world, comes from the wires."

"It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press," the statement added.

While Trump has regularly railed that specific legacy media organizations regularly "lie" about him and push left-wing propaganda, critics have argued that he is attempting to control the narrative by picking and choosing who gets to report on his administration.

Fox News host Jacqui Heinrich argued in an X post that the Trump administration's move "does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House."

The Huffington Post called it "a spineless act that breaks with decades of precedent," and accused the administration of violating the organization's First Amendment right to freedom of the press.

During the cabinet meeting, Trump admonished "the media," saying: "You don't write the fair thing... The people see it and that's why we won the election by so much."