Listen Here
Column by Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
“The president can’t just rename the Gulf of America, can he?”
“There’s no way he can just get rid of the Department of Education, right?”
“I swear, the East Wing was there yesterday.”
I am struggling to count the times over the past two years that I have thought, “wait, the president can’t do that, can he?” I’ve watched bodies of water be renamed with no justification (twice!), private citizens allowed to slash whatever budgets they feel like, and entire portions of the White House demolished overnight. I thought I had learned to expect the unexpected and watch it deepen the rift in America, but on Sept. 18, I was shocked to watch the president ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House.
The president gave no specific reason for these outlets, only saying that “It’s really just cumulative stories over the past few years.”
“I don’t have to let them into my, into the people’s house,” Trump said.
While the courts have given the president power to ban press from selective venues like private parties and Air Force One, a ban of this magnitude sent shockwaves around the journalistic world.
“Today’s action revoking access for journalists from CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW violates the First Amendment,” Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, wrote on X. “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.”
The three outlets sued, and on Sept. 23 Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington put a 14-day restraining order on the ban, forcing the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials of the banned journalists. Despite this order, issued at 2 a.m., journalists were not allowed back on to White House grounds immediately. A second, more specific, court order required the White House to allow the journalists back in by 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 24. While access was restored at 9:55 a.m. on Sept. 24, the organizations were not allowed access to a state dinner later in the day.
While the story itself is shocking, what really shook me to my core was the show of unity: all of the media–including Fox News– banded together against the ban. Instead of deepening the rift between ideologies, this ban created an alliance. When the three outlets were banned, all of the TV outlets that cover the White House (known as the TV pool) took their toys and went home.
All of them.
Web and print journalists still wrote articles and took photos, but no TV pool meant no microphones to amplify the president’s speeches and no video of events to share online or to air on national television.
This fiasco led to some amusing scenes: A ribbon-cutting ceremony where nobody could hear the president’s speech. A summit with Xi Jinping where no American network was shooting any live footage. The launch of a 24-hour YouTube channel covering the White House with no microphones.
Even more important than the amusing optics of a speech without any listeners, however, is the lesson on what Americans must do to maintain our civil liberties. This act of journalistic protest would not have worked if the entire TV pool hadn’t reached across lines to stand for the First Amendment.
But they did.
If one network had folded, business would have gone on as usual.
If CBS or ABC had decided that the absence of three news outlets was simply an opportunity for more air time, life would have gone on, and this story would have been forgotten in the grand scheme of the administration, just like the Gulf of America, the Department of Education, and the East Wing.
But they didn’t.
When We The People stand together, we are unstoppable.
