‘We will fight this one to the end’
☝🏻 That’s the message from CNN now that a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction saying President Trump’s press ban likely violates the First Amendment.
The injunction by Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, is a landmark victory for press freedom in the United States. Specifically, it protects CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s access to the White House while their lawsuit over last month’s ban continues; more generally, it repudiates Trump’s effort to replace reporters with propagandists.
Judge Kelly’s ruling essentially provides long-term protection, superseding the short-term protection he put in place on September 24. But it also “sets the stage for the Trump administration to appeal the case,” CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote overnight.
That’s why CNN chairman and editor-in-chief Mark Thompson is emphasizing that the network will fight for as long as it takes to protect the press and the public’s right to know.
Thompson made a rare appearance on CNN’s air this morning, speaking with Kate Bolduan about the ruling and what comes next.
“It’s not the end of the matter, I mean, sooner or later there may be a trial,” Thompson said. “But I think it’s a really big boost — the judge essentially saying our complaint is likely to succeed” at trial. Thompson called it “a vote of confidence in free speech” and the public’s right “to hear their political leader held to account by the press.”
Thompson noted the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation into the five major networks, which legal experts have called meritless, and said news outlets have to be “ever vigilant” about their rights.
“This topic is one we’re never going to back down from,” he said. “And no matter how many court cases, investigations, court appearances and all the expense that that entails, we will fight this one to the end.”
So far the White House has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the ruling. You can read it for yourself (here’s the PDF). Ted Boutrous, the counsel for the three news outlets, was particularly grateful for Judge Kelly’s dissection of the government’s efforts to invoke “national security” risks…
This morning CNN also rolled out a new 60-second marketing spot featuring statements from Thomas Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama about the foundational role of a free and independent press in America.
Fellow TV news junkies, you’ll appreciate this one (here’s the video). It ends with the words, “Freedom of the press is not optional.”
Before I turn to all the other national news-about-the-news, I want to make sure you’ve seen this year’s State of Local News report, published by the Medill Local News Initiative. The 2026 report came out yesterday, and Tim Franklin says it shows a “Super El Niño-like event for local news, leaving widespread and long-lasting displacement in its wake.”
“This will be remembered as a seminal year for local news,” Franklin writes. “The number of news desert counties in the U.S. ballooned by 26, the largest single-year rise by far since Medill began keeping records five years ago. There are now 238 news desert counties. Newspapers closed at an escalating rate of nearly three every week.”
The discouraging stats continue. But there are also “green shoots of hope,” he points out: “There were 75 local news startups in the past year, most of them digital-only outlets. National local news networks — like Axios, TAPinto and States Newsroom — continued to flourish. And there’s an ever-expanding number of news content creators helping to fill the void.”
Check out the full report here…
“The Pentagon has named one of its own public affairs officials to run the publication Stars and Stripes, and he will keep his Pentagon job while doing it,” Adam Gramegna reports for Military.com. It’s a troubling appointment for the following reason: “This places a single official inside both the office that shapes the military’s message, and the newsroom charged with covering it independently.”
FCC chair Brendan Carr joined Trump’s entourage yesterday, flying on Air Force One to Alaska for the president’s rally in Wasilla.
Trump quipped that “Brendan” is “the most feared man in government,” chuckling a bit as he said it. An hour later, he brought Carr up on stage to tout government efforts to improve internet access in the state, as the Anchorage Daily News noted here.
Before Carr boarded Air Force One, he confirmed my report that the FCC is looking into ABC’s faulty story about Trump’s sons. He said: “Step one is, did it air on broadcast or not? Step two is, are there other ways it could be relevant to the FCC?” I told him the story was online-only and did not air on broadcast. He said his team will look into the matter…
Whether you watched live or not, you know Katie Zacharia’s debut as WH press secretary was awkward and all too brief. One of Kaitlan Collins’ administration sources called it “brutal.”
My pet theory: The whole point of yesterday’s briefing was to get the word out that Trump wanted Kimberly Guilfoyle gone. And on that level, it worked. (See below.)
As for all the reviews, I mostly agree with the “NewsNight” viewer who wrote in and said, “This is a non-story compared to all the really important things that are going on. And it comes off as inside baseball and mean.”
There are worthwhile inside-baseball stories about Zacharia, including about Trump pushing her to hold a briefing right away, and about his “central casting” approach “backfiring spectacularly.” But those stories are mostly about Trump, not Zacharia, and that’s the point I want to emphasize: What the president says matters a lot more than what his spokesperson says.
>> In other news, big questions remain about why Zacharia has called herself a lawyer for years. WaPo’s Scott Nover looked into that here.
The Wall Street Journal’s dogged reporting about Guilfoyle culminated in something truly unusual in Trump 2.0: a MAGA loyalist being shown the door.
One week after Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Parkinson revealed that Guilfoyle had pressed a Trump donor for money, today’s A1 story reads: “Trump’s Ambassador to Greece Resigns Amid Graft Allegations.”
That front-page story, plus the original scoop and a brand-new inside look at Guilfoyle’s final days on the job, are all among the five most popular stories on the WSJ’s website right now…
Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports: Trump “was set to be deposed Friday in a defamation lawsuit he filed against the BBC, but his lawyers recently canceled the session and said he is unavailable through at least mid-December, according to a court filing.” The BBC is objecting, of course…
The Justice Department is back in court today addressing Trump’s propagandistic ad campaign. Judge Jennifer L. Rochon set a 10 a.m. status conference to discuss whether the government violated her court order “by airing Trump ads for hours after the court-mandated deadline passed,” the aforementioned Scott Nover noted on X. I’m monitoring this to see if there’s any fallout…
Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico’s town hall with CNN and Jubilee is taking place tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. Erin Burnett will moderate. It comes days after MAGA media figures concocted a quickly debunked hoax about a mental-health facility stay during a campaign absence Talarico’s team attributed to the flu.
In this curtain-raiser, CNN’s Eric Bradner asks whether Talarico can convince voters wary of his GOP rival, Ken Paxton, “to break with the party — or at least stay home.” Paxton did not respond to CNN’s invitation to participate tonight…
Staffers across CBS News are abuzz about a heated editorial meeting involving the network’s coverage of Israel and Gaza, which was captured in audio obtained by Status’ Oliver Darcy.
Bari Weiss’ handpicked foreign editor, Shayndi Raice, delivered a 15-minute “lecture” defending her editorial choices and warned that “insubordination” was “legal grounds for firing,” Darcy reported. CBS News declined to comment on the story. TheWrap’s A.J. Katz has more here…
There were also lots of headlines about Scott Pelley yesterday after outlets picked up Texas Public Radio’s weekend report on his remarks from last Thursday.
Speaking with the Knight Foundation’s Maribel Perez Wadsworth at the Press Forward Summit, Pelley urged CNN staffers to be skeptical of the new owners.
“Skydance would tell you that it’s going to ensure the independence of CNN. I would direct my friends at CNN to observe what just occurred at CBS News in order to make a judgment about how they feel about that,” he said. But he also called Mark Thompson’s decision to stay at CNN a “very good sign.” Pelley said, “I think as long as he is there, he can be a firewall.”
Fresh off graduating from Stanford and releasing his book “How to Rule the World,” Theo Baker is joining The San Francisco Standard as the startup’s senior Silicon Valley reporter.
“Theo will cover the story of this moment: how AI is remaking everything, and the people pushing it forward,” per an internal memo shared first with Reliable Sources. He’ll also write a recurring column and “spend part of his time working on editorial product.”
>> The Washington Post is “closing its Springfield, Virginia, printing facility,” which means 118 employees will be laid off. (WUSA)
>> Christy Tanner, who took over as New York Public Radio’s president and CEO in February, “is stepping down after just eight months on the job,” Liam Quigley reports. “A three-person ‘temporary Office of the CEO’ will oversee the organization until a permanent replacement is found.” (Gothamist)
>> “While its fate at Skydance remains unknown,” the Discovery+ streaming service is raising its prices. (THR)
The Netflix layoffs that have loomed for weeks are now happening. “Netflix is cutting 6% of its staff, or roughly 1,000 positions globally,” the WSJ’s Joe Flint and Jessica Toonkel scooped this morning. Netflix’s product, tech, legal and HR teams will be hit hardest, co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos told staff in an email. The company will report its quarterly earnings after the bell next Tuesday…
>> “Some analysts expect the next ‘Grand Theft Auto’ to sell 40 million copies on PlayStation and Xbox and generate more than $3 billion in revenue in its first four months,” Jason Schreier reports. (Bloomberg)
>> Facebook is giving “users greater control over the algorithm that determines what appears in their feeds” via a new AI-powered feature, Lauren Forristal reports. (TechCrunch)
>> Microsoft “is putting together a new Xbox Labs group to explore the rapid emergence of… mods, many of which use AI models to help modders remix games in ways we’ve rarely seen before,” Tom Warren writes. (The Verge)
“Reese Witherspoon has teamed with Mediawan, a Paris-based independent production company, to buy back her production firm Hello Sunshine for low- to mid-eight figures,” Sara Fischer reported for Axios yesterday. The production company was valued at $900 million when Candle Media acquired a controlling stake back in 2021, but now Witherspoon and the investors are “buying it back at a fraction of that cost…”
“HBO has ordered a limited run of five episodes of Lena Dunham’s hit comedy with the majority of the original cast confirmed to return,” Deadline’s Peter White writes. “Production will begin next year, which will be 15 years after its premiere and 10 years after the Season 6 finale.” The right number of episodes at the right time, methinks…
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.