President Donald Trump’s attempt to divide and conquer the media isn’t going well. On Monday, after the White House deactivated CNN’s press passes, each of its major competitors said they would halt video coverage of the president until further notice. That means less attention: the lifeblood of this presidency.
Fox News and its personnel have performed creditably in this episode. The news channel’s Washington bureau chief, Bryan Boughton, chairs the group of TV networks that pool resources to record all of the president’s public appearances. He announced the decision to indefinitely pause presidential pool coverage alongside ABC, CBS and NBC.
Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, in her capacity as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, issued a statement saying that Trump’s move to bar Politico, MS NOW and CNN from the White House briefing room violates the First Amendment.
Similarly commendable media solidarity was displayed in 2009, when Fox News was on the receiving end of presidential ire. President Barack Obama’s administration tried to bar a Fox News reporter from a television pool, but the news channel’s competitors showed a united front, and the White House backed down. That would be a welcome resolution in this matter, too.
Republicans now cheering the exclusion of media outlets from the White House would do well to keep the Obama example in mind. If Trump’s move against Politico, MS NOW and CNN stands, the next Democratic president might exclude Fox News and other right-leaning outlets from the briefing room.
The White House belongs to the American people, who depend on news organizations to tell them what’s happening inside. Every president thinks the media’s coverage is unfair, but that just reflects the natural friction between the executive branch and the Fourth Estate. The nation’s far-seeing founders, anticipating this, guaranteed freedom of the press in the Constitution.
The three outlets that Trump blocked from the White House filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging that their rights were violated under the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process. The plaintiffs said in a joint statement that they are defending “the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly would be wise to grant an expedited hearing. The better outcome would be for Trump to change course — it wouldn’t be the first time. In any case, as the president is discovering now, reporters are going to continue covering him aggressively whether or not they have credentials to do so.
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