The White House Press Ban

On Friday, September 18, at 3:04 PM, President Trump signed off on a social media post that banned the news outlets CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from attending the White House. Trump rationalized this decision by saying, via Twitter, that these news outlets (or, as he writes in this post, “Third Rate Clowns”)  “only write negatively” about him and produce “false” information, which he claims “violates national security.” 

Surprisingly, Fox News, a well-known rival of CNN, suspended its coverage of Trump in an act of solidarity with the banned outlets. Since the ban, Trump’s latest events have either been covered poorly (when he unveiled his new helipad on Sept. 21 but viewers could hear nothing but white noise on the official White House feed) or not covered at all (the public did not get to view Trump welcoming President Xi Jinping from China on Sept. 23). 

On Thursday, Sept. 24, a federal Washington judge ordered the White House to lift its ban on the news outlets, but full access has not been restored. In their lawsuit against Mr. Trump, the affected outlets claimed “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our fundamental constitutional principles.” The future is unclear for these outlets and their access to White House coverage, but one thing is certain: they are fighting back.