Sean Spicer
Sean SpicerReuters

The White House on Friday blocked a number of news outlets from covering spokesman Sean Spicer’s question-and-answer session.

According to The Hill, Spicer decided to hold an off-camera “gaggle” with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

Among the outlets not permitted to cover the gaggle were CNN, The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News.

Those who were allowed to enter included journalists from Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network.

News organizations such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg and McClatchy were invited as well.

The incident comes amid President Donald Trump’s longstanding feud with the media over their biased coverage against him.

During the election campaign, research indicated that an overwhelming majority (91%) of mentions of Trump in the mainstream media were in a negative context.

Only 9% of news stories on Trump carried by the mainstream networks were positive towards him.

Some of the outlets that were not allowed to attend Friday’s session are ones that Trump has criticized over their bias, including CNN which he once branded as “fake news”.

Last week, Trump vowed to achieve his legislative agenda despite the “lies, misrepresentations and false stories” thrown at him by the media.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said on Friday that “claims that outlets were excluded are not factual.”

“The pool was there, so various media mediums were represented,” she wrote in an email quoted by The Hill.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)