CNN, MS NOW and Politico sue over White House ban, and the video pool goes dark

CNN, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) and Politico sued the Trump administration in federal court in Washington DC on Monday after being barred from the White House over the weekend.

The three outlets argue the ban is viewpoint discrimination: punishment for coverage the administration dislikes. They cite the First Amendment on press freedom and the Fifth Amendment on due process, and they are asking the court to restore full White House access and to put the video pool back to work.

President Trump said the outlets had run unfair and negative coverage for two years. "There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposefully negative things," he said.

Theodore Boutrous, the lead lawyer for the outlets, said: "The President has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn't like and to intimidate journalists."

The pool went dark

The part with the most immediate effect is not the lawsuit. It is that the major television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN, suspended the White House video pool rather than run it without CNN.

The pool is the shared camera crew that covers the president on behalf of every outlet. When it stops, so does most of the day's footage of the president, for everyone, including the networks that were not banned.

Why this matters from here

Two reasons a reader in Pakistan should care.

First, the practical one: a large share of what Pakistani channels and websites run as US footage comes through that pool, via the wires. If it stays suspended, the pictures dry up for Geo, ARY, Dawn and everyone else too.

Second, the precedent. The argument in this case, that a government may not withdraw access as punishment for coverage, is the same argument made in Pakistan when a channel's cable placement is moved or an advertisement budget is pulled. How a US federal court rules on viewpoint discrimination will be quoted in Pakistani press-freedom arguments for years, whichever way it goes.

What happens next

The case sits in the federal district court in Washington. The outlets are likely to seek a preliminary injunction, which is the fast route: a judge decides within weeks whether to restore access while the full case runs. Until then the ban stands and the pool stays suspended.