The three national news outlets President Donald Trump banned from the White House, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, have said they will sue the Trump administration. NigerianNews Updates
President Donald Trump announced the ban on Friday, accusing the organisations of writing “fiction or lies” about his team. The companies said their reporters were denied access to the building on Saturday.
In a joint statement on Monday, they said they were pursuing legal action to “protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports”.
Posting on Truth Social shortly after, Trump said the White House was not “instituting an assault on the Free Press” and that he was targeting “FAKE NEWS”.
The First Amendment forbids the government from “abridging” the freedom of the press – language that courts have traditionally interpreted as preventing the government from discriminating against the media based on the content of their coverage.
A statement from CNN, Politico and MS NOW continued: “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting.”
“Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
Announcing the ban last week, Trump did not mention specific stories or reporting that prompted the move, but later said: “it’s really just cumulative stories over the last few years”.
The US president added that there “may be others to join them”.
When later asked by a reporter what he meant by this, Trump responded: “Others to come in terms of fake news? Well, you know, the New York Times is fake news, the Washington Post is fake news.” NigerianNews Updates
CNN – one of only five US news outlets in the White House press pool for live television – was originally slated to cover Trump’s trip to the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday and Tuesday.
But the pool slot has remained vacant, and instead the conservative TV outlet, Real America’s Voice, was listed as “secondary” crew on the trip.
