“The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps,” Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News’s senior White House correspondent, recently argued, protesting the White House takeover of the press pool.

That’s not democracy: it’s a cartel.

The White House press corps is a small and heavily liberal group. Its legitimacy depended on at least the pretense of fair play and openness. That went by the wayside sometime back along with journalistic objectivity. It’s why the GOP has begun cutting ties with media organizations. Maintaining a hostile media cartel never made much sense anyway.

There are arguments that allowing the White House to pick who will cover it is bad for a free press. And that would be a good argument if we had one of those, it would be a good argument if anyone in that same press had bothered to report on Biden’s mental state or ask Obama challenging questions.

Democrats in the White House for the most part get a free pass from the White House press corps which means they’ve already picked the media that will cover them. Equal time may mean letting Republicans have the same privilege. Is it healthy for a free and open discussion? No. But it was the media’s decision to switch from biased reporting to 24/7 partisan agitprop and now the consequences are coming in.

The idea that the media has any entitlement to decide who will be allowed to cover anything is nonsense.

The WHCA was a convenient arrangement. That arrangement belonged to a chummier era. It’s done now.