The Constitution is not negotiable.
Donald Trump can’t make a deal to erase the First Amendment because he doesn’t like unfavorable media coverage. Welcome to the club of presidents who have bristled at negative coverage. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would feel his pain.
The first refuge of a tyrant is to crack down on a free press, but Trump’s latest attempt—and there have been many—will not silence critical analysis of his administration. It will likely only amplify it, and it should.
No president gets to discriminate against media based on a dislike for their content.
After confiscating press credentials from CNN, MS Now and Politico’s White House correspondents and photographers over the weekend—citing negative coverage of him by those outlets—fellow members of the White House press pool refused to take CNN’s spot on the White House video pool rotation Monday.
That means there would be no video pool coverage to share with the rest of the independent press corps covering the president in the people’s house, nor shared pool video of his public initiatives, meetings and movements. The White House TV pool includes CNN, FOX News Media, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News, and takes turns taking pool video of major White House coverage, then distributes footage to other outlets.
photo by Nils Huenerfuerst
Despite Trump’s love of calling negative coverage of his presidency “fake news” and his labeling the press “the enemy of the people,” he’s not going to win this one. It’s illegal. His base may delight in his pushbacks on press freedom, but this latest one is fake policy. It’s unconstitutional and disgraceful—even for him.
It may distract a bit from coverage of his low approval ratings, his policies fueling rising inflation and his deeply unpopular war in Iran and the Mideast. With midterm elections looming, maybe that was the idea, but it won’t work.
The three outlets banned by this hapless Trump edict filed suit Monday requesting a temporary restraining order to overturn his arbitrary and capricious action, and they are likely to win the TRO. When serving in a public office in America, you can’t discriminate in granting access to some but not all based on poor coverage. Even FOX News Media, historically a huge supporter of Trump’s lies and falsehoods, joined the group of White House press refusing to take CNN’s place in the pool rotation. Kudos to Fox. The press can’t overcome this new outrage without unity.
Fox also knows the dangers of allowing discrimination against one media organization; it is only a matter of time before a tyrant singles you out next. This year, the president of the White House Correspondents Association is Fox Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. She wasted no time putting out a statement on behalf of the Association criticizing Trump for censorship that violates the First Amendment protections of a free press and calling on the administration to restore the three outlets' access at once.
"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."
Heinrich also posted on X: “The president said it plainly in the Oval Office, describing his own planned action as a ‘ban on the free press.’”
After the three outlets sued his administration for the ban, Trump fired back on Monday with a Truth Social post of his own, claiming his “White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, which is something I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like a cancer on our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
Trump may make that argument in court, but it is very unlikely to fly. He has shown no legal basis for it. He should get on with governing and stop picking nonsensical fights with the media. It’s not the messenger threatening the nation; voters increasingly agree it’s the mess he has created of the country.
It’s not the first time he has tried to bend the media to his will, and on Friday in announcing the ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, he also threatened to ban more media whose coverage displeases him, posting, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
His administration has made it policy to go to war with the media—an undeniable assault on the free press. Just to name a few: Trump’s Pentagon last year banned reporters who refused to sign a pledge not to gather news there unless it was first authorized. His Justice Department sought subpoenas for phone records of New York Times reporters and their family members to try to discover confidential sources critical of the security measures on a new Air Force One 747 aircraft gifted by Qatar.
The Department of Justice approved the arrest of local Minnesota reporter Georgia Fort, along with former CNN journalist Don Lemon and other journalists, after they covered a protest Jan. 18 against the immigration crackdown in St. Paul, where demonstrators interrupted a church service. They were later charged with federal civil rights violations and pleaded not guilty.
The list of assaults on the press by this administration and its attack dogs is long and egregious. Some press experts, like journalist Margaret Sullivan, a former public editor and reader watchdog for The New York Times, argue that there might have been more solidarity among the White House press corps long before now. “What if there hadn’t been so much tolerance of and accommodation for Trump’s bullying?” she asked in her Substack column, “American Crisis,” on Monday. “What if principle was as important as access?”
The media must stick together if this current round is to succeed in protecting press freedom. The best way to deal with a ravenous media hound is to deny him the video attention he craves, put him in the digital doghouse and give him a TV time-out. Teach him to mind the Constitution.
Storer Rowley