WASHINGTON — Leading US news organizations filed on Monday a lawsuit against the US government two days after the White House abruptly stripped their correspondents of press access and prevented them from doing their jobs.
“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” CNN, MS NOW, and Politico said in a joint statement posted on X, warning that the move “threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
The reporters’ entry badges were disabled on Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump suddenly announced he was barring the outlets because of reporting he found to be “fake news.”
The outlets said that they formally notified the administration of the legal challenge to defend their First Amendment rights, the US Constitution’s guarantee of a free press, and to protect the principle that federal authorities cannot determine what news media publish.
Trump defended the exclusions by asserting he was “tired of reading and seeing fake news” produced by the outlets, and that he dislikes “dishonest press.”
The actions were a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable, and were the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States.
White House reporters from the two cable networks — Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW — went live to report they’d been turned away, their press badges deactivated, when arriving for their jobs at the White House. Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated.
In his second term, Trump and his Republican administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets, both in the courtroom and through regulatory action.
Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
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.”
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 staunchly conservative TV outlet, Real America’s Voice, was listed as “secondary” crew on the trip.The pool acts as a representative for the media, sharing material with other outlets to save on finance and space when covering presidential events.
The WHCA’s president, Jacqui Heinrich, called on the Trump administration to immediately restore the three outlets’ access.
“The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Heinrich said. “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.”
Source: Saudi Gazette