The White House press office announced stricter guidelines for press “hard passes” last Friday, as reported by The Daily Beast. These passes provide journalists with more regular access to the White House compared to temporary day passes. They usually take a few months to be authorized and processed.
The press office sent a letter to all current hard pass holders expressing their intention to revise the requirements to align with those of previous administrations. As previously reported by Confider in March, the Biden administration was looking to return to the credentialing rules of the Obama era. This move could impact fringe reporters with a history of disrupting press briefings on a near-regular basis.
The website reported that all current passes expire at the end of July. Journalists will have approximately three months to request renewal under the updated guidelines, and if approved, the pass will be valid for one year with the option for annual renewal. The applicant’s bureau chief or supervisor must send a letter to the White House press office to obtain a hard pass. If the news organization requests passes for multiple employees, they do not need to send separate letters for each individual.
The key changes in the updated hard pass guidelines revolve around requiring all applicants to work for a reputable news organization. The press office specifies that hard pass requests must be written from the journalist’s employer on official letterhead. The media outlet’s contact person must verify that the applicant meets all credentialing requirements.
To qualify, the applicant must be a full-time employee of a news-gathering organization. If they are a freelancer, they must provide letters from at least two news organizations describing their affiliation. If they primarily work for just one organization, that organization must describe the extent and duration of their relationship with the outlet.
The applicant must have a physical address in the greater Washington, D.C. area, either residential or professional. The press office also requires that the applicant has been on the White House grounds within the past six months or can provide proof of employment to cover the White House within the past three months. Finally, the applicant must be assigned by their outlet to cover the White House or provide technical support in its coverage.
Following the lifting of COVID restrictions and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the White House began to loosen some of the stringent restrictions on hard passes that the previous administration had put in place. In 2019, former President Donald Trump’s administration implemented new rules requiring reporters to be on White House grounds at least 50% of the time before renewing their credentials, which was seen as a move against the mainstream press.
Initially, foreign press members and independent journalists who had difficulty obtaining credentials initially welcomed the Biden administration’s more lenient stance on hard passes. However, the resulting chaos in the briefing room led some White House reporters to question whether the rules had become too lax. Despite this, as a First Amendment group, the White House Correspondents’ Association would not support revoking a journalist’s hard pass.
