President Donald Trump revoked the White House Press Passes from CNN, MSNOW and Politico, citing that these news outlets were publishing “fake news” about the administration.
While a judge has since ordered the White House to give the outlets their passes back, the returns will only be temporary. The order lasts 14 days, but Trump and his administration continue to insist that the outlets remain barred.
As both a journalist and a Republican, President Trump’s actions regarding these three major political news outlets has left me downright disappointed.
Donald Trump is not the first president to feud with the press, particularly when a president viewed the press as hostile, but very few have ever tried to outcast the press.
Famously, Thomas Jefferson had a contentious relationship with the press. In his 1805 Second Inaugural Address, he complained that “the artillery of the press has been levelled against us,” accusing newspapers of spreading “falsehood and defamation.”
Richard Nixon once referred to the media as “the enemy” during the height of the Watergate scandal.
However, not one president has made “fake news” more a part of their political brand than Trump. Press Freedom Tracker followed the President’s anti-press sentiments on X from June 2015 to before his first term ended in January 2021.
The tracker found that Trump made 2,500 anti-press statements, often saying that the press was attacking or targeting him specifically while letting his political opponents off scott free.
While there are certainly biases in the media, the founding fathers understood the importance of press. The first amendment specifically outlines that no law can prohibit the five freedoms of expression — including the press.
In Sherrill v. Knight, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that President Lyndon B. Johnson could not ban “The Nation’s” Robert Sherrill, after not giving him reason as to why he was banned. Years later, Sherrill would learn that he was deemed a “security risk.” The court decided in 1977 that a reason must be given and that a ban could not be due to “content based criteria.”
Similarly, Barack Obama’s feud with Fox News in 2009 led to an attempt to exclude the network from interviews at the Treasury department. It was only when the press untied and attempted to pull coverage as a whole did Obama stop with the attempted exclusion.
When President Trump announced that he would be banning left leaning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House and cited that they were publishing “fake news,” he betrayed what his party stands for.
The GOP has always been the party of freedom from an overreaching government. But this particular instance is a gross overreach of power from the executive branch.
UM philosophy senior and veteran Rolando Prieto said, “I don’t agree with the CNN ban, but I also think both parties are increasingly willing to sacrifice First Amendment principles in their fight against each other.”
If the president believes a news organization is publishing false information, they have every right to criticize it, challenge its reporting and make their case directly to the American people. But government access to the president should not become a reward for favorable coverage.
Reporting on the government should be a key role that the press plays. The president can’t warn us about communists and socialists in one breath, then try to use similar tactics that Cuba — an authoritarian communist country — has been using in its press for decades.
The question should not be whether CNN, MS NOW or Politico deserve our sympathy. The question is whether the government should have the power to decide which news organizations are allowed to cover it.
For Republicans who believe in limited government and a free press, that is a question worth taking seriously.