By Scott Brinton
One early casualty of President Donald Trump’s war of words over the Gulf of Mexico is freedom of the press.
The president barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the news agency took a principled stand by refusing to refer to the water body as the Gulf of America in its reporting. This came after the president issued an executive order changing the name that had been in place for 400 years.
The AP is based in New York City and provides stories to news outlets throughout the United States. But it also is a global news service, with client media around the world. The AP explained that calling the Gulf of Mexico by Trump’s preferred name would confuse its international readers and viewers. The AP noted that the agency “must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.” Indeed, no other country acknowledges the renaming, which has no official bearing on international boundaries.
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