What happened
CNN, Politico and MS NOW on Monday filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to ban them from the White House. CNN is one of five networks in a rotating pool that provides live coverage of presidential events, and to demonstrate their objections to Trump’s press ban, the other four — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — stopped their cameras indefinitely.
Who said what
“As far as I know, there is no precedent either for a president to ban cameras or networks — or for networks to boycott an event in solidarity,” Hunter College presidential media expert Harold Holzer told The New York Times. “Thrilled to see it.”
With the network cameras off, Trump was largely inaudible during Monday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new White House helicopter landing pad. Trump tried to “shrug off the lack of network TV coverage,” The Associated Press said, but he has “long crowed about how the new helipad” would “impress Chinese President Xi Jinping” when he arrives on Wednesday.
What next?
None of the major networks traveled to New York with Trump, “nor were they planning to be present at his meetings with foreign counterparts” at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the Times said. “If the dispute remains unresolved,” the “most television-addicted president in history” will host Xi “without network cameras present.”
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News have stopped their cameras for the time being
