Major Television networks have agreed to suspend coverage of President Trump in the TV pool after CNN was barred from participating in pool duties on Monday.
President Trump announced on Friday that CNN, Politico, and MS Now would be banned from the White House “effective immediately.”
Previously, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC had a shared responsibility of providing television coverage of the President and distributing the footage across the airwaves. CNN had reportedly been slated to cover the President’s travel to New York today, but they were apparently axed from the list.
In a departure from the norm, the daily guidance for the White House Press Pool, which includes the President’s schedule and the pool rotation for the day, did not include a TV station in the TV pool. Instead, Real America’s Voice is slated to take over TV coverage as the secondary TV pool crew.
Following CNN’s exclusion from the day’s events, Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who leads the television pool consortium, said in a letter to television pool members that they will no longer cover the President, according to the New York Times.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Boughton wrote. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.”
This comes as CNN, MS Now, and Politico announced plans this morning to sue the Trump administration over Trump’s ban of the outlets and revocation of White House credentials.
Previously, Fox News correspondent, Jaqui Heinrich, the President of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement on Friday following the ban:
The president said it plainly in the Oval Office, describing his own planned action as a “ban on the free press.”
The Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference. That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.
This is about more than the rights of journalists. It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office.
The WHCA stands in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.
Heinrich went on to slam the White House, saying the revocation of White House hard passes from the outlets “violates the First Amendment,” arguing that “a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future.”
The same organization, however, didn’t make a peep when the Biden Regime purged more than 442 reporters with similar restrictions on White House hard passes…
This is a developing story.
