Donald Trump’s fight with the media has escalated with the news that five major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, have suspended their pool coverage of the White House. Their decision comes after the Trump administration banned CNN, along with MS Now and Politico, from the White House for alleged “fake news” and “negative news” reporting.

CNN was due to be the White House broadcast network responsible for covering the White House for the week beginning September 21. In a joint statement the networks said: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organisation because it objects to its reporting.”

CNN, MS Now and Politico have filed a lawsuit “to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes”.

According to the US constitution, the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The once mighty White House Correspondents Association said on September 19 that the “action revoking access for journalists from CNN, Politico and MS Now violates the First Amendment […] The WHCA calls on the administration to immediately restore our colleagues’ access.”

On the day after the ban was announced, CNN’s Betsy Klein, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett all reported on having their badges taken away from them after showing up to work at the White House.

Klein’s report on CNN argued reporting would continue and “we can do our job anywhere”. But while this is a commendable aim, it is a wrongheaded argument to make when you are also maintaining that you ought to be doing that job from inside the White House because access is an inalienable right.

Trump’s media battles

Trump likes to characterise his relationship with the press as open and transparent. And yet he has been embroiled in multiple court cases which have seen some media outlets, such as CBS, hoist the white flag, paying stupendous amounts of money for alleged unfair reporting or editing. The BBC is still facing a US$10 billion (£7.4 bllion) lawsuit over a so-called “unfair edit” in a Panorama programme dating back to 2021.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press (AP) is also involved in its own ongoing court action against the Trump government over its banning from Oval Office and Air Force One pool reporting. The ban was imposed following AP’s decision to continue using the internationally recognised geographical term the “Gulf of Mexico” – which Trump demanded be changed to the “Gulf of America”.

Some media advocacy groups are condemning this latest blow to press freedom. Seth Stern from the Freedom of the Press Foundation said: “It’s difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than Trump banning news outlets from the People’s House for criticizing the government. It’s also hard to imagine a dumber move.”

Given that this White House, in particular the vice-president, J.D. Vance, is often heard parroting the cause of free speech, it is also deeply ironic.

Bad press precedents

Many previous heads of government have clashed with the press in the past but stopped short of bans. Joe Biden restricted the number of press “hard passes” to the White House in 2023 from 1,417 to 975, but as Politico reported at the time, the administration argued this was “about ensuring those who hold them are actively working the beat”.

Barack Obama’s Treasury Department was accused back in 2009 of intentionally trying to exclude a Fox News reporter from interviewing his administration’s “pay czar”, Kenneth Feinberg. This was put down to a miscommunication and was rectified by the administration. On September 19, Obama told an audience at Colgate University which was discussing the newly introduced Trump press ban: “I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, you’re outta here!”

But perhaps the former president whom Trump most resembles is Richard Nixon. One must not forget Nixon’s comments on the press, captured on his own secret audio tapes made from the White House in 1972. In a meeting with his national security advisors Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, he said: “Never forget the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy, the professors are the enemy.”

Today, the organisations that have oversight of press access and coverage are toothless. There was a time when the WHCA was in charge of organising the press pool rotations and access to briefings and Air Force One. But now it has to bow before Trump’s decisions on granting access to media outlets that extol the virtues of his administration.

According to Pew Research data (2022) only one in six media workers in the US are in a union.