Major television networks have suspended their participation in the White House television pool after CNN was excluded from pool duties on Monday, according to a report by The Gateway Pundit. The move escalates a confrontation between the Trump administration and major news organizations over access to the president.
President Trump announced Friday that CNN, Politico, and MS Now would be banned from the White House “effective immediately.” The three outlets had their hard passes revoked, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from press freedom advocates and the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Networks Step Back from Pool Duties
Before the ban, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC shared responsibility for providing television coverage of the president and distributing that footage to other outlets. CNN had reportedly been scheduled to cover the president’s travel to New York on Monday, but was removed from the rotation.
In a break from standard procedure, the daily guidance for the White House press pool—which typically lists the president’s schedule and the pool rotation—did not include a television network in the TV pool slot. Instead, Real America’s Voice was slated to take over TV coverage as the secondary pool crew, according to The Gateway Pundit.
Following CNN’s exclusion, Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who leads the television pool consortium, sent a letter to pool members stating they would no longer cover the president, according to The New York Times.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Boughton wrote. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.”
The suspension means the television pool—a cooperative arrangement that allows a small group of networks to share footage with the broader press corps—will not provide coverage of presidential events designated as pool coverage. It is unclear how long the suspension will last or what alternative arrangements might be made.
Legal Challenge Looms
The development came as CNN, MS Now, and Politico announced plans Monday morning to sue the Trump administration over the ban and the revocation of their White House credentials. The lawsuit would argue that the administration’s actions violate the First Amendment, though details of the legal filing were not immediately available.
The White House has not publicly commented on the networks’ decision to suspend pool coverage or on the planned lawsuit.
WHCA Condemns Ban
Jaqui Heinrich, a Fox News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, issued a statement Friday condemning the ban. In her remarks, she described the president’s own words in the Oval Office, where he characterized his planned action as a “ban on the free press.”
“The Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference,” Heinrich said. “That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.”
She continued: “This is about more than the rights of journalists. It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office.”
Heinrich added that the WHCA “stands in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.”
She went on to criticize the White House, saying the revocation of hard passes “violates the First Amendment” and warning that “a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future.”
The Gateway Pundit noted that the same organization did not publicly object when the Biden administration purged more than 442 reporters with similar restrictions on White House hard passes.
A Rare Break in Press Access
The White House press pool is a longstanding institution that allows a select group of journalists to cover the president in settings where space is limited, such as the Oval Office or Air Force One. The television pool is a subset of that arrangement, with networks taking turns providing video coverage that is shared with all outlets.
Presidents of both parties have occasionally clashed with the press over access, but a formal ban on specific outlets and the subsequent withdrawal of the television pool represents an unusual escalation. The decision by the networks to suspend coverage could leave the public without independent video of certain presidential events, though the White House could choose to provide its own footage.
The administration has not indicated whether it will allow other outlets to fill the void left by the networks. Real America’s Voice, which was listed as the secondary TV pool crew on Monday, is a smaller outlet that has frequently been supportive of the president.
As the legal battle takes shape, the practical effect of the networks’ suspension remains to be seen. For now, the television pool—a fixture of White House coverage for decades—has been put on hold, leaving a gap in the flow of images and sound from the president’s public appearances.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/just-major-television-networks-suspend-white-house-pool/