By Jan van Groesen

The public part of the meeting that Donald Trump had arranged for Ukrainian  President Zelensky in the White House on Friday was attended by a reporter from the Russian state news agency TASS. Journalistic representatives of the Western global news organizations Associated Press (US) and Reuters (Gr.Br.), on the other hand, were banned from this press session. It seems that this selection of journalistic presence fits in with the new course that the Trump administration has taken with regard to Russia and the war in Ukraine. And that this also reflects the broader conflict that has recently arisen between the new American president and the White House press corps.

For TASS, it was a unique opportunity to report directly to the Russian people on the highly unusual punishment that Volodymyr Zelensky had to undergo at the hands of Donald Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance. President Zelensky, the representative of a country that has had to endure a cruel and brutal war of aggression from Vladimir Putin for three years, clearly did not know what to do with the humiliation that befell him.

Power wave

For waging the war and maintaining Ukrainian  sovereignty, Zelensky depends on the support (military and financial) of the West, not least that of the United States. Bilateral and international discussions or negotiations often involve sharp exchanges of opinion, but this usually takes place behind closed doors. However, Friday’s meeting, characterized by a lust for power from the American side, was visible to the whole world, with Donald Trump indicating that as far as he was concerned, the session could last a little longer. From the perspective of international diplomacy, it was an unprecedented event in which the rules of respect and decency had been completely set aside.

Distressing

That the Kremlin was delighted with this gift from the White House will not surprise anyone, as evidenced by the positive reactions of the Russian media. How the Russian population has received TASS’s coverage from the White House is difficult to determine. Putin’s Russia has no freedom of the press and has silenced almost all independent journalists, including foreign correspondents. Independent media have been banned in the Russian Federation by the Kremlin. For the few Russians who are informed through the modern media, it seems very distressing to have to conclude that they are not kept informed from the Russian side of what is really going on in Putin’s war in Ukraine, certainly not of the many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who have been killed and of whom military observers conclude that Russian civilians are being used as cannon fodder in this war. The war may not even be called a war by the Kremlin, but ‘special operation’. And now TASS is invited to come and attend the staggering treatment of Zelensky by Trump cs about that war in Washington in particular, two leaders who until recently were each other’s greatest allies. It is not for nothing that political observers in the US noted that Trump is now going to speak the language of Putin in America.

Sensitivity

The presence of a TASS reporter in the White House is not remarkable in itself, but the sensitivity of which a journalist is admitted to the White House has now risen to great heights. It was the American TV channel MSNBC that widely displayed its surprise about the TASS presence in a contribution by its well-known anchor Rachel Maddow. MSNBC had asked the White House spokesman about the reason for this presence, but the spokesman indicated that he was not aware of this and therefore could not respond. It puts the conflict between journalism and Trump’s White House even more on edge. Earlier, the international news agency AP was denied access to the press room of the White House because AP refuses to rename the Gulf of Mexico into Gulf of America, as Donald Trump would like. Recently, three journalists from the British news agency Reuters were also prevented from accessing Trump. The reason for this is not yet entirely clear.

Trump takes control

Since the 1950s, it has been normal practice in the United States that the selection of the journalists and media that follow the president in the White House and in the government plane Air Force One is in the hands of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA). That WHCA represents all journalists who report on the president and controls the press pool if a rotating system is to be applied. But now a problem arises. Donald Trump took control of which journalists have access to him a week ago. “From now on, we will make the decisions,” Trump said, sharpening the confrontation with journalism.

It was followed by a fierce condemnation of Eugene Daniels, the chairman of the WHCA, who stipulated that “this move undermines the independence of a free press in the United States. In a free country, leaders do not choose their own reporters.” Daniels was especially angry because there had not been a signal in advance or an announcement from the White House. However, the White House press secretary said that with Trump’s decision, “power is returned to the people,” something that was immediately contradicted from within the news media.

Donald Trump has called the news media the enemies of the people time and again from the beginning of his political appearances. There is now a fear that not much will remain of free speech in the US and that democracy will continue to wither away.

Jan van Groesen

2-3-2025