Dozens of major news organizations, including CNN, The Washington Post and Fox News, wrote to the White House this week urging the Trump administration to immediately lift its ban on The Associated Press, which had been prohibited from attending a number of official press events over the past week.

The White House has said it is blocking reporters from the news service because the outlet refers to the Gulf of Mexico in its articles, rather than “Gulf of America,” as decreed by President Trump in an executive order on Jan. 20.

The letter, which was coordinated by the White House Correspondents’ Association and delivered on Monday, was signed by 40 outlets. It said the decision to bar The Associated Press was “an escalation of a dispute that does not serve the presidency or the public.”

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from asserting control over how news organizations make editorial decisions,” the letter said. “Any attempt to punish journalists for those decisions is a serious breach of this constitutional protection.”

The letter was first reported by the media newsletter Status. Alongside the mainstream media outlet signatories, which also included The New York Times, NBC and The Wall Street Journal, were the conservative outlets Fox and Newsmax.

“We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports The A.P.’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting,” a Newsmax spokesman said in a statement. “We fear a future administration may not like something Newsmax writes and seek to ban us.”

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