TV networks stand in solidarity
Good morning. We’re sending a special edition of Reliable Sources as we’re at a confluence of two major media stories, both involving CNN’s future. We expect news of a settlement between Paramount and the state AGs very shortly. Details are TBA. So this edition will focus on the other big breaking news:
Today’s lawsuit by CNN, Politico, and MS NOW is one of the strongest media efforts yet to push back on President Trump’s undemocratic actions against the American press corps.
Readers have been asking me if the other major TV networks will stand in solidarity with CNN over the president’s ban. This morning we got the answer: Yes, they will.
The lawsuit was announced just after 6 a.m. Eastern. Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed and I have all the legal details in this story.
A little before 10 a.m., ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC put out a joint statement in response to the Trump White House removing CNN from its “TV pool” duty today.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” the statement reads.
Even more notably, the “TV pool” decided not to replace CNN, which means the five networks will not cover Trump’s events designated for pool coverage, according to an email from Bryan Boughton, the Fox News DC bureau chief who currently chairs the pool.
“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” Boughton wrote to other pool subscribers. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
Kaitlan Collins explained the significance of this to John Berman on-air: “When the president does anything today, there will be no TV camera with the president that is broadcasting and sharing this footage” with the wider press corps and networks around the world.
Last I checked, this president likes to be on camera.
And there will be other cameras: The pool photographers are still in place, and so are “secondary” TV crews, but those crews are not obligated to share their footage.
A source tells CNN that the White House tried to line up an alternative broadcaster to fulfill pool duties: Gray TV, an owner of local TV stations. Gray TV declined, the source says.
“This is an extraordinary escalation,” New York Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum wrote. “Even amid the White House’s lawsuits and threats, we’ve rarely seen this kind of collective action by archrival news outlets.”
Clearly, other newsrooms know that they might be next. Trump has already threatened to ban others.
As the NYT’s Peter Baker put it, “If a president can throw news organizations out of the White House because he dislikes their coverage, then no news organization is truly free because it means we are all in the building only at his sufferance.”
That’s why this moment isn’t really just about CNN, MS NOW or Politico.
The ban “is a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process,” said Ted Boutrous, the First Amendment attorney who has been retained by the three newsrooms.
“The President has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration,” Boutrous said this morning. “This ban on the free press harms the American people, who are entitled to rigorous, fact-based coverage of the President of the United States. The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible.”
If you’d like to read the lawsuit in full, here’s the PDF.
WaPo’s Scott Nover reported just now that “this case has been assigned to Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee who previously presided over Jim Acosta’s press pass case.
Polantz noted to me that Judge Kelly scheduled a hearing in that case and granted a temporary restraining order very quickly.
Some new CNN reporting this morning sheds some light on Trump’s state of mind when he decided to ban those newsrooms on Friday afternoon, seemingly out of nowhere.
Kevin Liptak and the aforementioned Kaitlan Collins report that Trump’s “human printer,” Natalie Harp, was showing him clips of media coverage before he posted his Truth Social diatribe banning the outlets.
“One source said a graphic from Politico was among the material that is believed to have infuriated the president and helped inform his decision to bar the three outlets from the White House grounds,” the pair report. “The president also viewed clips from television, a second source said…”
FIRE’s Nico Perrino said it bluntly on X: “I still can’t believe a president of the United States actually said ‘there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories.’”
The Free Press called that out too, in an editorial over the weekend, titled “The President Versus the Press.”
“By barring reporters from the White House, Donald Trump is once again demonstrating his administration’s willingness to ride roughshod over the fourth estate,” the editorial says.
The Free Press, of course, is run by Bari Weiss and now owned by Paramount, which appears poised to take control of CNN.
The editorial is one of several public shows of support by Paramount and CBS for the news network that will likely soon become its corporate sibling.
In addition to the network’s participation in the joint pool action, “Face the Nation” spent a great deal of time yesterday covering the White House’s CNN ban, and the CBS News X account shared a quote from CBS White House reporter Weijia Jiang telling CNN’s Dana Bash that “an attack on one media organization is an attack on all media organizations.”
Last night, some of the Democratic states suing to block the Paramount–WBD deal were divided. But overnight talks apparently cleared the way for a settlement.
Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and other outlets report that an announcement is imminent. We will follow up with another edition of Reliable Sources if and when it comes.
“You couldn’t script it better,” an insider texted me just now, referencing Yom Kippur: “The deal goes through on day of atonement when CNN is banned from the White House.”
Speaking of CBS News…
The second episode of the revamped “60 Minutes” under Weiss and Nick Bilton aired last night, and this time the headlines were actually about the journalism — namely Ross Douthat’s deeply compelling interview with Patrick Clancy.
Douthat “deserves praise for being genuinely thoughtful and curious,” Variety’s Daniel D’Addario wrote in a positive review. “This was the interview every TV outlet sought, and ‘60 Minutes’ can be highly proud.”
He went on, “The question remaining is whether, in weeks between massive gets that exist entirely outside the narrative of an increasingly unpopular presidency whose functionaries Weiss courts, ‘60 Minutes’ can maintain this momentum…”
That’s the focus of two pieces from CNN and the NYT, which offer detailed looks at how the president has “broke” the Kennedy Center during his second term.
A source familiar with discussions about programming tells CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Sunlen Serfaty and Jacqui Palumbo that artists and productions “will not come back” and that “none of those donors will come back as long as Donald J Trump is the chairman.” Another source puts it more starkly: The center “will never be the same.”
For the NYT, Elizabeth Williamson and Julia Jacobs pored through internal emails and documents to capture how Trump appointees proposed altering the center.
“The center’s first Trump-appointed director, Richard Grenell, pursued a plan, not previously reported, to replace works in the center’s art collection, including gifts from foreign nations honoring Kennedy, with art selected by Trump patrons,” the pair writes. Read that full report here…
>> Scott Nover shows how American University’s Kogod School of Business is helping former VOA staffers “build sustainable media ventures of their own.” (WaPo)
>> Jessica Davies and Sara Guaglione spoke with lawyers and AI licensing experts to make sense of last week’s emails in the Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. (Digiday)
>> Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” reboot “collected $60 million in its opening weekend,” a number that’s “way above expectations, and they register as the largest debut in the 24-year-old horror franchise,” Rebecca Rubin writes. (Variety)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.