The Trump administration’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico has disrupted television pool coverage of the presidency, leaving the public without the customary independent footage of President Donald Trump’s activities. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the White House’s arbitrary and retaliatory exclusion of the three news organizations and supports their lawsuit challenging the ban.
On September 18, Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would be barred from the White House, baselessly accusing the outlets of publishing “fiction and lies.” The following day, journalists from all three organizations were denied entry to the White House complex and had their press credentials confiscated.
The consequences for the public’s right to information were immediately apparent when on September 21 it was announced that there would be no White House TV pool. CNN, which was scheduled to serve as the television pool network covering the president on Monday, including during his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, was prevented by the White House from carrying out its scheduled pool duties. The pool is an arrangement among ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News to take turns covering presidential events, intended to spread the financial and logistical burden among the five stations. Only a small handful of news outlets have the capacity to provide this level of coverage.
Fox News’ Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who coordinates the television pool, informed subscribers that, effective September 21, the television pool would not cover presidential events going forward as a result of the ban on CNN. No replacement pool has been announced as of now.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico also filed a lawsuit against Trump and members of his administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking emergency relief restoring their access to the White House. The three outlets argue that their credentials were revoked in retaliation for coverage the president disliked, in violation of their First Amendment rights and their due process protections.
"The White House’s unconstitutional ban against these three outlets is really a ban on the public’s access to the American presidency. By preventing CNN from fulfilling its scheduled pool duties, the administration has disrupted a system that allows people all around the world to follow what the American president says and does. Trump cannot ban the media just because he doesn’t like the coverage he gets. RSF stands with CNN, MS NOW and Politico in their legal challenge to this ban and calls for their White House access to be immediately restored."
Clayton Weimers
Executive Director, RSF North America
This confrontation comes after the Trump administration significantly changed the system governing access to presidential events. In 2025, the White House took control of the composition of the presidential press pool, displacing the longstanding role of the White House Correspondents’ Association in determining which journalists participate in the rotating pool.
The administration had also restricted the Associated Press (AP)’s access in February 2025 to certain presidential events following a dispute over the news organization’s decision to continue using “Gulf of Mexico” in its editorial style after Trump’s executive order renaming it the “Gulf of America.” The AP legal challenge to the restrictions is still ongoing.