The Gulf of Controversy

​You might like, laugh at, or deplore the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. One thing that cannot be disputed is that the administration’s new designation has spawned the sale of innumerable T-shirts.
 
Private organizations are free to adopt or not adopt the administration’s terminology. Google, for its part, enacted a diplomatic solution. Use Google Maps in the United States and you will find that it reflects the new name – Gulf of America. But Google Maps users in Mexico will find that the old name, the golfo de méxico, is intact.
 
The AP news organization does not have the luxury of splitting names in its reportage. It stuck with the old name, as do most Americans. This makes sense, given that Mexico’s Gulf coastline is longer than that of the United States. Now AP says the White House has informed the news organization that because AP “did not align its editorial standards” with the executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, “AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.” An AP reporter was later blocked from an executive order signing.
 
AP says that these actions violate its First Amendment rights. It remains to be seen whether courts will hold that this action violates the letter of the First Amendment. AP can argue that the White House is engaged in viewpoint discrimination, even if about access to a limited public forum. This kind of petty play and attempts to direct editorial policy from above is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment.
 
Those who advocate such a muscular approach to press relations were the first to protest attempts by the recent progressive administration to strongarm corporations, universities, and media into language policing. We were told to refer to America’s Latino population as “Latinx” (which most Latinos hated), to women as “birthing persons,” and to pronoun policing. The Trump press office would do well to discontinue the tradition of heavy-handed language control.

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