President Donald Trump’s war with the corporate media is headed to federal court.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration after the White House revoked their journalists’ credentials and barred them from the grounds, escalating a long-running battle between Trump and some of the country’s largest news organizations.
Trump announced the ban Friday, accusing all three organizations of repeatedly publishing “fake news.”
The threat quickly became reality.
CNN senior White House reporter Betsy Klein arrived for work Saturday and discovered that her credential had been deactivated. MS NOW correspondent Akayla Gardner and Politico reporter Cheyenne Haslett were also denied entry.
Now the outlets want a federal judge to intervene.
Their lawsuit argues that the administration violated the First Amendment by punishing news organizations because of their coverage and violated the Fifth Amendment by stripping their journalists of access without adequate notice or due process.
Trump isn’t backing down.
The president has repeatedly attacked the three organizations, particularly over coverage he considers inaccurate or unfair. The White House has defended its authority to determine who enters the complex, declaring: “White House access is a privilege — not a right.”
The administration’s argument, however, is now headed for a serious constitutional test.
Legal experts told Reuters that while journalists do not have an unlimited constitutional right to White House access, existing federal court precedent creates significant problems for excluding individual reporters or organizations specifically because officials dislike their coverage.
The dispute is already spreading beyond the three banned organizations.
Major television networks declined to replace CNN when it was scheduled to perform White House pool duties, disrupting the longstanding arrangement through which networks rotate responsibility for providing video of presidential events to the wider press corps.
The White House Correspondents’ Association has also urged the administration to reverse course, arguing that allowing the government to exclude one outlet because of its reporting could establish a precedent applicable to any news organization.
Trump, meanwhile, has indicated that CNN, MS NOW and Politico might not be the last.
That raises the stakes considerably.
The court battle isn’t simply about whether CNN, Politico or MS NOW deserve access. The larger constitutional question is whether an administration that grants journalists access to the White House can withdraw that access specifically because it objects to what those journalists report.
Trump says he is fighting “fake news.”
The three media giants say he is punishing unfavorable speech.
Now a federal judge gets to decide where presidential authority ends and the First Amendment begins.