US President Donald Trump announced last week that he would ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House amid unfavorable reporting against him.
Reporters from three news organizations reported going to work over the weekend only to find that their access had been revoked. By Monday, three groups had filed suit against the administration, alleging that the White House was violating their First Amendment rights.
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Free speech advocates accused the White House of disenfranchising them.
“It’s hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than President Trump’s banning from the House of Representatives of news outlets that criticized the government. It’s also hard to imagine a more foolish move,” Seth Stern, advocacy director at the Press Freedom Foundation, said in a statement.
“The historically unpopular president has been retaliating against the press for years, to no avail. The press continues to expose the president’s corruption and failures. These outrageous attacks only show how much he fears the informed public.”
Still, the White House has defended the decision, with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio supporting the administration’s position.
As reported by Politico, Brian Boughton, FOX News’ Washington bureau chief and rotating TV pool chairman, announced in a memo on Monday that the TV networks participating in the pool would suspend coverage of the presidential pool after CNN was removed from scheduled pool duties.
What is a pool?
The White House Press Corps is a group of reporters who follow the President in a smaller setting when space limitations prevent a broader press corps from being on-site.
Pool reporters share their reports with other journalists and news organizations. It provides them with live coverage materials, including transcripts of press conferences and information about the whereabouts of the president and often his staff.
Essentially, wherever the president goes, a small group of reporters records what happens there and uses that information to pass on to the rest of the White House press corps and deem it suitable for reporting.
Group reporting is not intended for editorial purposes. It acts as a shared newsgathering resource, allowing other news organizations to report on events that they cannot participate in directly.
In many cases, the details are fairly mundane, such as when the president’s motorcade leaves the White House or arrives at an event, when Air Force One takes off and lands, or what remarks the president made before boarding.
For television networks, this pool also provides video and audio feeds that can be used by other news organizations at their discretion.
One of the reasons this system exists is due to physical limitations, as Air Force One has limited space for members of the press. There are only 13 seats for reporters on the presidential plane.
Each day, different news organizations are assigned pool duties. The TV pool rotates between five networks. They are ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC. Other parts of the pool include print, radio and new media organizations.
How does this affect other retailers?
Cooperative News subscribers include small television station groups, streaming networks, and international news organizations that do not have a dedicated presidential crew.
This includes organizations like C-SPAN and other news organizations that rely on pooled video and audio to cover presidential events.
The effect was immediate during an event at the White House on Monday. The president’s remarks were difficult to hear because there was no television pool staff to provide a normal audio feed.
The TV pool will continue to provide coverage to other branches of government, including Congress, according to a memo obtained by Politico.
How have pools been used historically?
This pool has led coverage of some of the biggest events in recent U.S. history.
On September 11, 2001, Poole and his colleagues accompanied President George W. Bush to an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, and recorded his reaction when he was informed of the New York attack.
Decades ago, in 1981, Poole reporters were present at John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
Less than a decade earlier, Poole had accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic 1972 trip to China, and in 1963, Poole’s reporters accompanied the Dallas, Texas, motorcade where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
(In 1945, three news agency reporters from Poole traveled by train to Georgia with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, where they were present when he died.
