Nation's Journalists to Donald Trump: Let the Press Cover You

Leaders of 15 media organizations released a letter today imploring President-elect Donald Trump to follow tradition and allow a press pool to follow his daily activities.

"As the new leader of the free world, we expect that you will preserve longstanding traditions that ensure coverage of the Trump presidency," reads the letter, penned by Thomas Burr, president of the National Press Club. "The idea of a press pool that covers all of the president's movements is one that dates back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Every president of both parties has treated this important tradition with respect."

The letter comes as many reporters have raised concerns over Trump's distance from the press.

Tuesday night, reporters assigned to Trump discovered he had left Trump Tower without alerting them for the first time in days. According to the reports, they only realized he had departed when they saw his motorcade leave the building.

Journalists had been told he wouldn't be leaving the residence that evening. Instead, he went to a family dinner at the 21 Club, a nearby restaurant.

This breaks the established protocol wherein the president, and the president-elect, is up front with the pool of reporters about his whereabouts and schedule.

"The role of the press pool is critically important to our country, whose citizens depend on and deserve to know what the president is doing," reads the letter from the National Press Club. "This isn't about access for the press itself, it's about access for Americans in diverse communities across the country. Your constituents receive information from a variety of platforms to learn about what our president is doing."

Among the signatories to the letter are Sandy Johnson of the National Press Foundation, Courtney Radsch of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Mizell Stewart III of the American Society of News Editors.

Trump immediately received criticism from journalists after the election when he traveled to D.C. without his press pool.

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