TV broadcasters banned from White House
US President Trump has banned several media outlets including the TV channel CNN and news website Politico, which is owned by the Springer-Verlag, from the White House. The President justified the move citing "fake news" about his activities. In response, TV channels ABC, CBS, Fox News, NBC and CNN have suspended their pool coverage of the president.
Steady slide into dictatorship
In barring CNN and other media outlets, Trump is attacking not only press freedom but also American democracy, warns The Independent:
“It is the inevitable latest move in the steady slide of the Trump regime into outright dictatorship. It is not the last move, just the latest, in a haphazard project to remove the guardrails of America's Constitution, in the widest sense, that were written and have evolved to prevent the re-establishment of what Trump seems to most want – a monarchy. ... America's one hope is that its social contract and democracy can be revitalised in the midterm elections to Congress this November. It needs a free press for that to happen.”
A matter of survival
The solidarity being shown by Fox News has a precedent, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explains:
“In the autumn of 2009, Barack Obama's government was locked in a dispute with Fox News. ... The Treasury Department tried to exclude the channel from a pool interview with Kenneth Feinberg, the official responsible for managing top managers' earnings following the financial crisis. At the time, the other broadcasters refused to accept this. CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC rallied around Fox News and announced that they would not take part in the interview. The Obama administration relented. Then as now, it was not the other broadcaster's stance that was being defended but freedom of the press. Because what hurts your competitors today can be turned against your own outlet tomorrow.”
Poland knows how to do media protest
In the age of the internet, TV broadcasters are too weak to influence politics, Rzeczpospolita concludes:
“The one-day boycott against Trump is, sadly, the swan song of the mainstream media. It comes too late and involves too narrow a circle to have any real impact. The boycott was announced by television broadcasters in a world where the internet reigns supreme. ... Coordinated media campaigns can be effective, as we in Poland have already demonstrated on several occasions by organising protests against the government's authoritarian tendencies. ... But only if they take place at the right time and on a truly wide scale. Only then is the fourth estate in a position to influence the course of political events.”