WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The White House on Tuesday stripped journalists of the nearly century-old power to decide which of them cover US presidential events, with Donald Trump boasting that he was now “calling those shots” on media access.

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt made the surprise announcement at a daily briefing, saying that the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) would no longer have a “monopoly” on choosing members of the “press pool.”

The press pool is a small group of reporters that covers the US president in often cramped spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One, and shares their material with other news organizations.

The WHCA — of which Agence France-Presse is a member — said the decision “tears at the independence of the free press.”

The 78-year-old Trump was in the Oval Office — with a pile of red baseball caps on his desk saying “Trump was right about everything” — when he was asked to comment on the move.

“We’re going to be calling those shots,” Trump said about media access.

The move came amid an escalating battle between the White House and the Associated Press news agency, which Trump has barred from presidential events in a row over his renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

WHCA President Eugene Daniels criticized the move, saying the White House had not given any advance notification.

“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president,” Daniels said in a statement.

“In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, a WHCA board member, said on X: “This move does not give the power back to the people -- it gives power to the White House.”