News organizations say they are pushing back every day against Trump administration restrictions on access to facilities where children separated from their parents are being held. Government handouts satisfy few, and there have been disputes raised in some of the few independent instances where a sense emerges of what is happening at the border.

“It’s not enough for the government to provide curated images,” said Noah Oppenheim, NBC News president. “The public expects and demands and has the right to see a verified picture of what is going on inside these detention centers and how this policy is being carried out in their name.”

After reporters were allowed to tour one Texas facility without cameras, the administration objected to descriptions of fenced-in enclosures as cages. A still photograph of a crying Honduran toddler whose mother was stopped crossing into the United States became a symbol to many of the since-reversed separation policy, in large part because other images were limited. The government revealed Friday that the girl and her mother were being held together.

Calls for access collide with a longstanding tradition of not allowing photographs of children in government care that the feds have applied to the immigrant children. The federal Health and Human Services department cites a 2015 policy that predates Trump’s presidency in prohibiting cameras, interviews with children or tours without two weeks’ notice. Their age leaves the children vulnerable to abuse, HHS said.

If the government wants to negotiate, there are ways to set ground rules to protect the interests of both sides. For instance, journalists are often embedded with military forces with the promise they won’t reveal strategy or troop movements that could put people at risk. CBS News is willing to negotiate, although standards editor Al Ortiz said Monday that CBS ran a story that showed some immigrant children being transported outside of campgrounds with some faces visible.

“Otherwise, we’d have a faceless story,” Ortiz said.

From the administration’s standpoint, the rule lowers the heat, communications experts say. Audio obtained by ProPublica of crying children at a federal facility was influential before Trump changed his policy — even though there were no visuals.

“In general, your goal is to demystify things, because every imagination could run wild if you allow it to,” said Joel Johnson, who worked in the Clinton White House and Capitol Hill and is now managing director of the Glover Park Group, which includes crisis counseling. “The fundamental question is whether what’s behind the curtain is worse than people imagine. If that’s the case, you don’t let people behind the curtain.”