The White House Correspondents’ Association has only itself to blame

The White House kicked a Huffington Post reporter off press pool duty and replaced him with an Axios reporter, and apparently this makes President Donald Trump basically the same as Vladimir Putin.

This is the story being told, at least, by the White House Correspondents’ Association and friends. If you struggle to identify with this reaction or wonder why it matters to you or your freedoms, you’re not alone. But the funny thing is that it drills down into exactly the problem American corporate media has in the first place — and why its rapidly diminishing influence won’t be restored any time soon.

Our power is influence, and it derives entirely from the public’s trust.

For decades, the WHCA has run who is allowed in and who is assigned to “pool duty” — the reporters and TV crews who follow the president and report to other members of the press corps who was in the room, what happened, when it happened, etc. These pool reporters also often get special access to ask the president and other White House officials questions.

Much of the work is essentially clerical, but that last bit is a big deal. The questions that reporters ask the president drive the…