Prime Minister Andy Burnham is preparing to meet US President Donald Trump for the first time at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Tuesday, ITV News US Correspondent Dan Rivers reports
CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing Donald Trump’s administration days after they were barred from covering the White House, calling the selective ban “a blatant violation” of the First Amendment.
The ban was an escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable.
The news organisations said on Monday the move violated the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, where the government is forbidden from restricting the press.
The banned news outlets said in their lawsuit that the Constitution “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting”.
The three outlets filed the joint lawsuit two days after their reporters were blocked from the White House and prevented from doing their jobs.
The reporters’ entry badges were disabled on Saturday, a day after Trump had suddenly announced he was barring the outlets because of reporting he found to be “fake news”.
On Monday morning, the banned TV networks were reporting from a junction just outside the White House complex.
CNN, meanwhile, was removed from its pool duties, which are shared by the five major networks. It had been scheduled to cover the president’s trip to New York for the UN General Assembly.
In an email to members, the TV pool wrote there would be no replacement coverage following the White House actions.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” said the email, seen by the Associated Press.
“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, explained on air that this meant: “When the president does anything today, there will be no TV camera with the president that is broadcasting and sharing this footage”.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote on Monday morning that he “cherished” what he called a free press.
“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” the president said in his post.
“It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control.
“It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
In the joint complaint, the outlets said: “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”
They say they’re being banned from doing their jobs at the White House “for one simple reason: (Trump) dislikes the content of the coverage of him and his administration”.
“President Trump has said in no uncertain terms that he would prefer only to be covered by news organisations and reporters who praise his administration,” says the complaint.
It went on: “But the Constitution does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”
In legal terms, that’s known as “viewpoint discrimination,” the government singling out specific media outlets for the content of what they say or publish.
On Saturday, White House reporters from the two cable networks, Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW, went live to report they’d been turned away and their press badges deactivated, when arriving for their jobs at the White House.
Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated.
All three organisations that were banned covered the White House’s actions extensively during the weekend.
The White House Correspondents Association’s president, Jacqui Heinrich, called on the Trump administration to immediately restore the three outlets’ access.
“The implications extend beyond these organisations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Heinrich said.
“The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinise those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favourably.”
The move follows the president’s decision last year to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters.
The AP said it would note when appropriate that Trump had ordered it renamed the “Gulf of America”.
The AP filed a lawsuit and the case is ongoing. Since returning to office, Trump has pursued other legal action against a variety of different outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.
His administration is also involved in a long-simmering confrontation involving ABC over renewal of its broadcast licences.
Over the weekend, the AP expressed solidarity with the banned news outlets.
“No news organisation – or person – should be retaliated against by the government over the words they use,” said a statement from the news cooperative.
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