Press freedom is under siege in the United States after two months with Donald Trump in the White House, the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières (RSF) says.

“The newly-elected president, his administration, and his political allies have conducted a rapid series of attacks on press freedom that amount to a monumental assault on freedom of information,” RSF said in a statement issued in February.

Trump has long waged a battle against the traditional media, often referring to the press as an “enemy of the people,” and accusing the media of promulgating “fake news,” while spreading disinformation on his own social media channel. 

In its first months in office, Trump and his officials limited White House and Pentagon access for Associated Press, NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and Politico; they launched personal attacks and social media harassment of specific reporters, and have taken concerted action to hide government information from journalists and the pubic in violation of Freedom of Information laws.

Trump recently advocated making it illegal for journalists to investigate and report on his maleficence, legal troubles and false claims. Several countries with authoritarian leaders – Saudi Arabia, Russia and China for example – have made it illegal to defame the leader, and such statutes that are regarded by human rights organizations as attacks on freedom of expression.

In a speech at the Justice Department, Trump said the networks and newspapers ”are really no different than a highly paid political operative.” He claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “corrupt.”

Meanwhile, Associated Press asked the federal court to restore its access to the White House media pool after Trump officials barred its reporters over a disagreement about its continued use of “Gulf of Mexico.”  

The news agency argued the White House ban violates its journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and press guarantees, while the administration’s lawyers said the First Amendment does not include guaranteed access, The Guardian newspaper reports.

AP is a not-for-profit global news agency. It is owned by its member U.S. newspapers and broadcasters, and operated as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It was founded in New York City in 1846.

Trump administration officials banned AP reporters from the White House pool after the wire service refused to adopt the name Gulf of America to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. While President Trump officially changed the name in the United States, AP argues its new service is a global operation and other countries still use the name, Gulf of Mexico.

AP says its access to the White House pool is “rooted in the First Amendment’s free speech.” Those rights can only be abridged with due process of the law, it added.