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World

TV networks halt White House pool coverage in solidarity with banned CNN

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC suspended their White House pool rotation on Monday after Donald Trump ordered CNN, MS NOW and Politico barred from the presidential complex.

By Sarah Whitfield · · Updated · 2 min read

The White House south lawn with its fountain and flag, Washington, DC
Photo: Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons · source

The five major US television broadcasters suspended their White House “pool” coverage on Monday in an extraordinary show of solidarity with CNN, after President Donald Trump ordered CNN, MS NOW and Politico barred from the presidential complex.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC said they were halting the pool rotation — under which one broadcaster films on behalf of all television outlets for the day — following a ban Trump announced on Friday. CNN had been scheduled to serve as Monday’s TV pool.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” the five networks said in a joint statement.

Bryan Boughton, Fox News’s Washington bureau chief and chair of the television pool, relayed the decision in a 21 September email to pool members obtained by USA Today: “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

The effects were immediate. With no television crews travelling to New York, there was no pooled coverage of Trump’s trip to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday. And at a Monday ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new White House helipad, the president could not be heard on the White House’s own livestream because of the missing pool boom microphones, USA Today reported.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico went to court on Monday seeking the immediate overturning of the ban, arguing it violates the First Amendment. “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the outlets said in their filing.

Trump was unrepentant, branding the media a “cancer” and a threat to national security on Truth Social. “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” he wrote.

Sources

  • Danny Kemp, “US networks halt Trump coverage over White House ban”, Agence France-Presse via GMA News Online, 21 September 2026
  • “Major TV networks suspend White House pool coverage after Trump ban”, USA Today, 21 September 2026
  • “All major broadcasters boycott Trump’s White House over reporter ban”, The Times, 21 September 2026

More on this topic: all World stories

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