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The Associated Press and Time Magazine reportedly boycotted Friday's gaggle in protest.
Trump administration spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told CNN that the White House "had the pool there so everyone would be represented and get an update from us
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today."
When asked whether the Times and CNN were excluded from the gaggle because President Trump doesn't like their coverage, Spicer said, "We had it as pool, and then we expanded it, and we added
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some folks to come cover it. It was my decision to expand the pool."
One reporter with the Times tweeted that Spicer told the gaggle that Trump's administration "is more accessible than probably
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any prior administration."
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As a Politico reporter pointed out, Spicer said in December that allowing all outlets into the gaggle regardless of their coverage is "what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship."
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CNN and the Times both issued statements decrying the White House's decision to block media outlets from covering the briefing.
"This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House," the former said in a
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statement. "Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like. We'll keep reporting regardless."
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Dean Baquet, the Times' executive editor, 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
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exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations," Baquet continued. "Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest."
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The White House Correspondents Association, an organization that represents the White House press corps, also denounced the decision.
"The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today's gaggle is being
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handled by the White House," the group said in a
statement. "We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who
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were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff."
Just hours after President Donald Trump said the media represents the "enemy of the people" during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, reporters from major media organizations were banned from an off-camera White House press briefing with Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
According to CNN, Spicer's aides blocked The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, CNN and BuzzFeed from entering his office for the informal briefing, also known as a gaggle.
Reporters from NBC, ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg were allowed into the gaggle, as the Times reported, as well as representatives from the conservative media outlets Breitbart News, the One America News Network, Fox News, and The Washington Times.
