'Ominous': Stunned CNN analyst warns Trump's media mayhem goes beyond anything before it
CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel called President Donald Trump's decision to bar three news organizations from the White House "ominous" during the network's coverage Friday, saying the move goes further than the administration's previous actions against the press.
Gangel noted that Trump's hostility toward the press is not new, tracing it to his first campaign and his use of the phrase "fake news" across a decade in public life. What sets Friday apart, she argued, is the step itself.
Even measured against the Pentagon restrictions, the revocation of Jim Acosta's credentials and the dispute with The Associated Press, she said, this goes beyond and carries the threat of more outlets to follow. She called it unconstitutional and predicted the courts would overturn it.
She also raised questions the announcement leaves open, such as whether something specific triggered it or it was simply cumulative, and whether senior White House officials knew it was coming or were blindsided.
Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office that there was "no particular reason" for the ban, saying instead that "you get sick of it" after what he described as two years of accumulated coverage.
CNN responded with a statement backing its White House team, saying the network has a constitutional right to report without government hindrance or interference and that carrying out the ban would amount to an "illegal assault" on that right.
Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was blunter, calling such a ban "flatly unconstitutional." He argued that once the White House admits some journalists, the First Amendment bars it from excluding others over their reporting, describing the move as textbook viewpoint discrimination that courts would strike down if challenged.
The organization has made that argument successfully before.
When the White House barred the AP over its refusal to adopt Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, the Reporters Committee filed a brief supporting the wire service, and a federal judge ordered the AP's access restored, writing that a government which opens its doors to some journalists cannot close them to others because of their viewpoints.
As of Friday afternoon, the practical effect remained unclear. CNN reported that Trump specified no action had actually been taken against the outlets and identified no specific reporting that prompted the announcement, and its journalists were working from the White House grounds as usual.