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News Orgs Ask Court to Bar WH Ban 09/29 06:11
(AP) -- Three news outlets that President Donald Trump abruptly banished
from White House grounds this month asked a federal court to block the ban
until the case is resolved, saying the administration has "persisted in
unpredictably and inconsistently implementing its ban" despite a judge's
restraining order -- including selectively barring CNN from White House
https://apnews.com/article/trump-pool-ban-cnn-msnow-politico-dc1a144d37a5d2e9048
8eec110ca9835 duties.
"The White House's words and actions leave little doubt that it will
immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO if allowed
the opportunity," lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico wrote in a filing late
Monday.
"Because the ban is an unlawful assault on the most fundamental First
Amendment freedoms and will inflict irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and the
public if not restrained, this Court should preliminarily enjoin its
enforcement pending the resolution of this case," the filing said.
It was the latest development in the back-and-forth saga of the Trump
administration and the news media during the second term of his presidency. It
has been a contentious relationship that has raised multiple First Amendment
questions, produced sanctions and restrictions on White House and Pentagon
reporters and led to several lawsuits that are winding their ways through the
federal court system.
A two-week temporary restraining order on Trump's ban of the three
organizations, issued by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly last week, restored
the outlets' White House access, but expires Oct. 8. The preliminary injunction
requested in Monday's filing would extend the White House access until the case
is finally resolved.
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press immediately after the filing,
the lead attorney for the three news outlets called the ban "a blatant
violation of the First Amendment and due process."
"The president and his administration have continued to make clear that this
ban has only one purpose: to punish reporting he doesn't like," said the
lawyer, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.
"That's retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple," Boutrous
said. "With the district court's temporary restraining order expiring this
week, it is critical to ensure that the White House continues to be prevented
from implementing this unconstitutional ban on the free press."
The White House still says access is a privilege, not a right
The filing came a day after the Trump administration made clear it was not
backing down from its contention that the sudden ban, which began Sept. 19, was
justified.
"When it comes to the White House, it is the people's house," Attorney
General Todd Blanche said on ABC on Sunday, invoking an argument the
administration has made since the beginning. "It is a privilege, and not a
right, to be there."
Monday's 42-page filing reiterated many of the arguments that the news
outlets made
https://apnews.com/article/trump-ban-ms-now-media-cnn-politico-72f9acf68244ca70e
9078d9d3661c722 against Trump and the White House, filed two days after the
reporters were banned.
It also added mention of the White House broadcast pool rotation, which has
become a battleground in the last few days in the standoff between Trump and
the media.
The White House, it said, "has persisted in unpredictably and inconsistently
implementing its ban, including by barring CNN from fulfilling its role as
designated television network pooler on Sept. 26 -- to the detriment of CNN,
its fellow pool members and, ultimately, the American public."
When the ban was implemented, CNN was removed from its duties as part of the
broadcast pool, which consists of the five main networks: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC
and Fox News. In solidarity, the other networks decided to suspend the pool
until CNN was allowed back in.
On Friday, CNN was allowed to cover the president with Chinese leader Xi
Jinping at the National Archives. But in a new setback Saturday, the White
House banned the network from Air Force One, preventing it from covering
Trump's trip to a college football game in Tennessee. The rest of the pool
declined to provide a replacement, in solidarity with CNN.
Blanche defended that decision, too. "The president has every right to
decide who gets to fly on his plane," he said in the Sunday interview. He added
that Trump was "sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report
accurate news." He added that news coverage he described as "misinformation"
amounted to a national security issue.
"That is what is a national security problem, when you have complete
misinformation coming out of the White House," he said.
Kelly threw cold water on that argument
https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-ban-judge-ruling-cnn-msnow-politico-21605
e397fe48f178a4afa037e732c6d granting the temporary restraining order against
the White House ban. "The court is skeptical ... that defendants' interest in
safeguarding national security is the actual motivation" for removal of access,
Kelly wrote.
His ruling did not directly address the TV pool rotation. In the new filing,
the plaintiffs describe the important function the pool provides and makes the
case that it's an important part of the regular access to the president, and
his activities, that the media has traditionally had -- and must be restored.
It singles out the Air Force One case. "CNN received no official
communication from the White House explaining its exclusion," the filing says.
"Because CNN was excluded and no replacement designated, no primary television
network pooler accompanied the President on the trip."
Pool access issue has presented networks with tough choices
For now, networks in the pool have decided to address the ongoing standoff
on a case-by-case basis, according to a person familiar with the pool's
operation, speaking on condition of anonymity to give details of ongoing
discussions.
On Sunday, Fox covered a pool event; on Monday, NBC was covering the
president in the Oval Office. CNN is not in the rotation until Thursday. If the
network is again barred from a pool event, the networks will decide together,
presumably based on the newsworthiness of the situation, whether to provide a
replacement or to refrain from coverage as they did previously.
The issues at stake are difficult. On the one hand, the networks want to
take a stand on behalf of press freedom and against efforts to intimidate
coverage. On the other, media outlets have an obvious purpose of providing news
to their audiences.
"There are not a lot of good options," said David A. Schulz, director of the
Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.
Should the White House continue to bar CNN, Schulz said, networks may choose
"to exert their market power and say, 'We're not going to play ball with you.'"
The question, Schulz added, is: "Who's going to back down first?"
The networks "may well feel like they're between a rock and a hard place,"
noted RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah.
"Capitulation might be perceived as abandonment of core components of press
freedom," Andersen Jones said. "But the practicalities of lengthy White House
news blackouts are also complicated, and refusing to cover major news at the
highest levels of government might itself feel like a failure to serve the
goals of democracy."
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