Over the past week, the Washington press corps has offered a masterclass on collective resistance to Trump administration assaults on democracy and the rule of law. After President Donald Trump sought to ban three news outlets from the White House, in flagrant violation of constitutionally protected press freedom and due process, the targeted outlets filed suit in federal court. And as that litigation unfolded, something remarkable took place: Other news media stood in solidarity with the targeted outlets by boycotting audio-visual coverage of Trump.
The Timeline
It all started on Friday Sept. 18 when, in an apparent fit of social media rage, Trump posted, “effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW … and Politico … from the White House as a result of their constant reporting of FAKE NEWS!” Such a selective ban, in retaliation for coverage the president does not like, is a clear First Amendment violation. That afternoon, from his desk in the Oval Office, the president expressed his grievances against the three news outlets, highlighting several times over their “negative” reporting about his policies. The White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News issued a statement of solidarity and in defense of press freedoms.
By the next morning, Saturday, the announced policy had come into effect as reporters from all three news organizations were denied access to the White House.
By early Monday morning, Sept. 21, the three outlets had jointly filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming violations of First and Fifth Amendment rights. It was after their court complaint was made available online (6:40am ET) that Trump posted again, this time shifting to “national security” as a rationale for the ban (7:53am ET).
That day, Trump headed to New York ahead of a scheduled address to global leaders at the United Nations General Assembly. Video footage of the U.S. president traveling to the U.N. would ordinarily be covered by the White House TV press pool. The press pool system is a long-standing arrangement that alleviates the need for every media outlet to send its own reporter to get footage. Instead, a pool of assigned outlets provides, on a rotating basis, footage that is shared with other media outlets. CNN was scheduled to lead the TV pool coverage as Trump headed to New York. The ban prevented CNN from fulfilling its TV pool duties. In response, the other outlets in the TV pool – ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC, stood in solidarity, not simply by offering rhetorical statements of support, but by refusing to provide a TV pool at all.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President. This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place,” TV pool chair Bryan Boughton from Fox News informed the TV pool via email.
Photographers from the New York Times, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Getty Images who were in the photo pool, joined their television colleagues in solidarity. By Monday evening, NPR announced that it would not be providing any audio from the White House while the ban remained in place. The result, an audio-visual boycott of the president, was the clearest act of collective resistance to Trump’s violations of the constitution that we have seen since the start of his current term in office.
As the boycott played out, the U.S. district court moved quickly. On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, held an emergency hearing, which was open to the public. After midnight on Thursday, Sept. 24, Judge Kelly issued a temporary restraining order calling for the immediate reinstatement of the “hard passes” that enable journalists to access the White House. (Kelly stated that he “intends to rule expeditiously on the motion for a preliminary injunction,” requesting that the outlets file by Sept. 28, and that defendants respond by Oct. 2, with any reply due by Oct. 5).
Early on Thursday morning, it appeared that the Trump administration had failed to comply with the temporary restraining order, as reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were still denied access to the White House grounds. Lawyers for the targeted outlets filed a notice of non-compliance with the court, and Kelly ordered the Trump administration to respond by 12:30 pm.
In the meantime, Chinese President Xi Jinping was set to arrive at the White House, and ABC News, which was the scheduled lead for the TV pool, refused to start filming until it had proof that CNN had been granted access, and that it would be allowed to fulfill its pool duties going forward. CNN journalist Kaitlin Collins observed, “Right now, the Chinese communist state media is allowed onto the White House grounds … but we are not.”
By noon, reporters for the three outlets gained access to the White House grounds, and shortly before Kelly’s 12:30pm deadline, the court received a declaration from Director of White House Press Operations Micah Stopperich stating that access had been restored to CNN, MS NOW and Politico. But on Thursday evening, with CNN and MS NOW reporting that some of their journalists were denied access to cover Xi’s return to the White House for a state dinner, and with no assurance given that CNN would be able to fulfill its pool duties going forward, the TV pool boycott continued.
Harnessing the Power of Collective Action
Eighteen months ago, I wrote about the imperative of solidarity responses to Trump’s assault on the rule of law. At that time, there had been only thin efforts at collective action in the face of Trump’s efforts to bully some of the most financially and socially privileged institutions in this country – media outlets, but also law firms and universities – into submission to his agenda. “Nowhere yet have we seen true efforts at burden-sharing between those targeted and those not (yet) in the line of fire,” I wrote. After this week, that no longer holds.
In the face of Trump seeking to use the power of the presidency to crush a core tenet of democracy – freedom of the press – the press fought back and won. They moved quickly to the legal system and simultaneously engaged in real-time solidarity work, all the while explaining their actions to the public. Instead of each outlet assessing the situation solely through the lens of its own self-interest, each demonstrated the ability to step back and assess the broader stakes. It is worth noting that this was true across the right-left divide. By recognizing that a ban on one is a ban on all, collective action became not only possible, but essential.
It is too soon to say where this episode ends. One possibility is that it was a week-long flare-up that is now over. But that seems unlikely. Soon after Trump announced the three-outlet ban, he signaled that he would consider banning print outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post, from the White House also. Regardless, a wounded Trump tends to lash out. We have already seen what this looks like; Trump’s misogynist stream of berating and belittling journalists going about their work.
But perhaps now, having flexed their solidarity muscles and seen success, the White House press corps will carry the approach forward. Perhaps a ban on select print outlets will generate a boycott of print coverage. Perhaps the next time that a female reporter asks Trump a question, only to be told it’s a stupid question that he won’t answer, the next journalist he calls on will ask the same question, and so on and so on, until the right of every journalist in the White House press corps to ask questions of the president, without pre-approval of the president, is vindicated.
