Trump bans select news outlets from reporting on White House grounds

Byline: Katie Dusza, Managing Editor

News outlets CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing the Trump Administration following President Donald Trump’s decision to ban them from White House grounds, calling it a First Amendment violation. Trump declared this ban last Friday after expressing his frustration with negative stories about him.

The joint complaint was issued to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The statement highlights concerns about press freedom and how this act of censorship threatens democracy. The news outlets seek to restore access to White House through this lawsuit. In a Monday post to Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, Trump denied that his ban was a threat to freedom of speech and claimed that it was intended to push against “fake news,” which he claimed was being produced by the outlets involved in the lawsuit.

Federal courts have ruled in previous White House conflicts with the press that government officials can not ban specific outlets just because they don’t like what they’re publishing. In Trump’s previous term, he rescinded the credentials of two separate journalists. The courts ruled in each case that the White House must give journalists a warning before keeping them off White House grounds. In the current case, the three affected news outlets claim that they "received zero advance notice,” according to the lawsuit.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC have suspended their pooled coverage of President Trump following the ban. These networks have a long history of providing television coverage of the president, splitting the costs and distributing footage to news outlets worldwide, according to the New York Times. As a result, there was no pool coverage of Trump’s travel to the United Nations General Assembly this past Monday, as CNN was scheduled to cover it before the ban.

On Monday, there was a ribbon–cutting ceremony on the South Lawn for Trump’s new helipad. Due to the pool coverage suspension, no major TV network sent over cameras or boom microphones to the ceremony. The only coverage of the event was a livestream on The White House’s YouTube channel, which had bad audio quality, making Trump’s remarks that he made at the event essentially inaudible.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Trump administration to reinstate White House access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters. The ruling found that banning news outlets without due process is considered “constitutional harm,” which negatively impacts the public and their right to government transparency. 

The previously banned reporters were permitted to pick up their press passes around 10 am on Thursday; however, reporters claimed that well after 11 am they were still unable to access White House grounds. The journalists were finally allowed to enter the White House around noon.