Expulsion of press from public proceedings

Public proceedings — White House briefings, agency press conferences, court hearings, legislative committee meetings — are presumptively open to the credentialed press. Expulsion of specific journalists or outlets from these proceedings, on the basis of their coverage, is a form of access control deployed to chastise. Concrete forms include credentials revoked without cause, individual reporters barred from briefings while peers are admitted, and broad outlet-level expulsions framed as "security" or "space" decisions. Legitimate credentialing standards applied evenly are not expulsion; expulsion is what happens when the standards bend around the coverage.