Margaret Sullivan writes:

On Monday, the three news organizations that had been kicked out of the White House because of Donald Trump’s latest fit of pique sued the president and three top advisers.

An accompanying statement by CNN, MS Now and Politico accurately calls last week’s sudden lockout “a direct assault on the first amendment”.

The legal action is the right move, of course, and one that may prevail since the ban seems to be a clear case of what press-rights lawyers call “viewpoint discrimination”. In other words, Trump didn’t like their stories so he removed their access.

The president has been in a bad mood lately, for obvious reasons. Retaliating against the press is his favorite way to let off steam.

But something else, beyond legal action, is necessary, too.

“Time for the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal to report on the White House from off campus,” wrote Richard J Tofel, an attorney and the longtime president of the investigative news organization ProPublica, who writes a press-related newsletter, Second Rough Draft.

In other words, the biggest and most influential “print” news organizations – along with the major broadcast TV networks – should take collective action by boycotting that briefing room and similar White House events until their journalistic colleagues get their credentials back.

The major TV networks took a commendable step in that direction on Monday by deciding to suspend “pool coverage” of presidential events, since CNN was assigned to the duty of recording events and sharing them with the broader “pool” of news organizations.

“There will be no replacement pool put in place,” stated Bryan Boughton, the Fox News Washington bureau chief and chair of the TV pool in a memo to the White House press corps.

It’s especially good to see because the White House press corps often talks a good game about solidarity and press rights, but they’ve mostly kept doing what they’ve always done – treating Trump like any other president. [Continue reading…]