• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 15, 2025

Years before the Trump administration stripped the Associated Press of its access to the president and press events at the White House, Disney banned The Los Angeles Times for a brief period.

In 2017, the House of Mouse, which maintains one of the world’s most influential and respected TV news brands -- ABC -- was angered by a Times investigative piece that reported on the way Disney conducted its business in Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland. 

So the company barred Times critics and reporters from screenings of upcoming movies, which represented an imposition for a newspaper known for its coverage of its biggest hometown industry, the movie business.

The ban was short-lived, however, when other big newspapers -- among them The New York Times and The Boston Globe -- sided with the L.A. Times and announced they would ignore Disney’s movies in advance of their premieres.

This would have denied the company reviews of its movies -- and more crucially from a publicity point of view, the decidedly softer feature stories and interviews that customarily precede a movie’s release. As a result, Disney relented.

It should go without saying, but companies and presidential administrations should not ban news organizations because they don’t like how reporters cover them. Story subjects are entitled to call and yell at us, however. 

Bans are extreme actions that have no place in a country where freedom of the press is enshrined in its constitution. 

But negative stories are one thing. Disagreements on geographic nomenclature are another. 

Reportedly, AP’s offense had nothing to do with reporting at all, which makes the Trump administration’s moves to diminish and silence this vital news source a lot worse than a Disney ban from movie screenings.

Trump’s anger stems from the trusted news service’s continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” to identify a sizable body of water whose shoreline runs roughly from south Florida to Cancun, Mexico.

For no apparent reason that would make sense to anyone but Trump, one of his first acts at the onset of his new term was to declare that the Gulf of Mexico will now be known forevermore as the Gulf of America. Wasting no time, he did this in his inauguration speech on January 20.

Trivia alert: The Gulf of Mexico got its name in the 16th century. The name first appeared on a map in 1550, according to Wikipedia.

In any case, the AP refused to drop “Gulf of Mexico” and replace it with “Gulf of America,” and then Trump’s communications team banned the AP -- an A-list news organization -- from briefings, Oval Office chats and ride-alongs on Air Force One.

The banning took place on February 14. Before that, on January 23 -- three days after Trump’s announcement on Inauguration Day, the AP clarified its position on the name change.

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” said the AP. “The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.” This was apparently unsatisfactory for the president and his minions.

Earlier this month, however, a federal judge ruled in favor of the AP in a lawsuit the news service brought against members of the administration’s communications staff.

“Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists -- be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere -- it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” wrote U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden in what must count as one of the easiest decisions a judge ever made.

Incredibly but not too surprisingly, the White House refused to honor the judge’s ruling and barred an AP reporter and photographer on Monday from an Oval Office news conference with Trump and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

But wait, there’s more. On Sunday, Trump sought to weaponize the FCC, again, when he called on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who Trump appointed, to “impose maximum fines and punishment” on “60 Minutes.”

The outrageous request followed segments seen on Sunday night’s show -- one an interview with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the other a story about the Trump administration’s apparent desire to annex Greenland.

In defiance of the Trump administration, the TV Blog hereby vows to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico with its traditional, 400-year-old name.