Members of the White House television press corps, which rotates coverage of President Donald Trump’s events, decided on Monday to stop covering those events after the White House banned CNN from acting as one of its five members, CNN reported.
CNN was barred from covering President Trump as a designated TV pool participant on Monday while he was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
The decision by four other members of the television news crew not to cover Mr. Trump’s events comes after CNN, along with MS NOW and Politico, announced that they would file a lawsuit against Mr. Trump to overturn the ban on these three media outlets from the White House.
In addition to CNN, other members of the White House TV Group are NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and Fox News.
Members of television and other media will agree to take turns traveling with President Trump, covering events at the White House, and sharing video footage, photos, audio and quotes from those events with other members of the media.
“Starting today, the TV pool will no longer cover events designated as presidential pool coverage,” Brian Boughton, Fox News’ Washington bureau chief and acting chairman of the TV Pool Consortium, said in a memo to pool members obtained by The New York Times.
“This is based on the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pooling obligations,” Boughton wrote. “No replacement pool will be installed. Coverage for all other pools will continue as normal.”
“We will provide updates as the situation develops,” Boughton said.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about their government,” pool members said in a joint statement published on X by NBC News’ communications department.
“No administration should restrict media outlets because they oppose reporting,” the statement said.
Disclosure: CNBC and MS NOW are divisions of Versant Media.
