Trump banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House on Friday in response to media coverage he doesn’t like. This morning, all three filed legal challenges arguing that this was a blatant violation of the First Amendment. (See also: fork found in kitchen.)
Then the major TV networks turned the cameras off in solidarity.
In practice, that meant that Trump’s ribbon cutting ceremony was broadcast with no audio; only static buzzed atop footage of the coronation of his precious helipad. But more broadly, it means that we’ve crossed the rubicon in Trump’s ongoing and interminable war with our free press.
At long last, the media seems to have finally woken up to the fact that they are stronger together than they are fighting individual one-off battles against Trump in the most cowardly ways possible. Like, for example, by heaping millions of dollars to settle frivolous lawsuits into his pockets. Caving to Trump’s demands doesn’t advance their position. All it does is prove to him that they are weak, that he owns them, and that he can make them cave again.
That’s what he was betting would happen this time. It hasn’t.
Rather than retreating to their newsrooms to tie themselves in knots trying to regain access to the White House, these outlets banded together to fight back. CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have filed the legal challenges. The White House TV pool suspended its coverage. That means no White House event footage from ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, or even Fox News.
While I certainly believe that depriving Trump of his precious microphones and cameras is an appropriate consequence for his actions, let’s be clear: this isn’t about retaliation. This isn’t a strategy or a negotiating tactic or even a punishment. This is the media taking the necessary step of organizing to demand the reinstatement of CNN, MSNOW, and Politico because press freedom is fundamental in this country and there is no other option. We have a first amendment right to a free press in the United States. Period.
So yes, the product of this move is that Trump will surrender the attention that he so desperately craves, but we don’t actually need to justify this any more than recognizing the fact that the Constitution affords Americans an assurance that the government will not attempt to ban the free press.
I wish it didn’t take two years into this autocratic president’s second term for the media to learn how to respond to these attacks. I wish we didn’t have to watch news outlets offer millions of dollars to this president to curry favor with him. I wish we didn’t have to wait for the AP to win a lawsuit in front of a district court judge before they were allowed back into the Press Briefing Room for the crime of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. I wish, I wish, I wish.
Eventually, though, we landed at a place where legacy media finally learned the value of organizing to protect press freedom, understanding that banning one or two or three outlets effectively gives Trump tacit permission to ban anyone who doesn’t curry favor with him. It gives any future president tacit permission to ban anyone who doesn’t curry favor with them. The pendulum swings both ways, after all.
So while I understand that most people (myself included) will applaud the fact that Trump has effectively silenced himself and recognize that that’s a pretty damn effective strategy to get this media hound of a president to very quickly change course, that is not why the press is doing it, nor should it be why the press is doing it. The only justification that’s needed here is that we have a fundamental First Amendment right to press freedom in this country.
That alone is worth fighting for.
A SMALL sample of what’s being said on Threads today:
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