NEW YORK (AP) — MS NOW said its journalists were denied access to the White House Saturday morning, a day after President Donald Trump said he would ban the network and two other news outlets from the complex. There was no immediate word about access for the other two — Politico and CNN.
The action escalated Trump’s long-running efforts to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable, and is the latest test of First Amendment protections
in the United States.
MS NOW said in a statement that it stands behind its journalists.
“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” the network said in a statement Saturday. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”
Trump said Friday that he was barring the news channel, along with CNN and Politico, from the White House due to what he called unfavorable coverage and “fake news.”
It was unclear Saturday morning whether CNN journalists were also being blocked from the White House grounds. Network correspondents are usually present on the weekends when the president is in Washington or at nearby Camp David. Trump is at the presidential retreat in Maryland this weekend.
Politico journalists typically are not at the White House on Saturdays.
MS NOW White House correspondent Akayla Gardner was turned away, her entry badge confiscated, she said on air Saturday morning.
She noted she had walked through two gates successfully, but once she got to where her badge needed to be scanned, an officer told her it was disabled and asked her to hand it over. He said the decision “was above him," she reported.
An MS NOW producer was able to get in, but a photographer's badge was also disabled, Gardner said.
The president wrote on his social media site Friday that effective immediately, “I am banning” CNN, MS NOW and Politico “from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” Minutes later, speaking at an event in the Oval Office, Trump was asked to explain his statement.
“Because they’re fake news,” he said. “You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. When you look at CNN, it’s just fake. That’s why their ratings are no good. When you look at MS NOW … , it’s fake news.”
“And when you look at Politico ... the stories they wrote are fake. So there’s a lot of news and there may be others to join them, and maybe they can get better,” he said. “But our country has to have honest news.”
In his second term, Trump and his administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets, both in the courtroom and through regulatory action. Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms.
The move follows the president’s decision last year to bar Associated Press 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 that it would note when appropriate that Trump had ordered it renamed the “Gulf of America.”
