The Justice Department is investigating whether the nation’s major television networks broke federal antitrust laws when they jointly pulled the plug on press pool coverage of President Donald Trump, according to a Saturday report from The New York Times.
Sources told the Times that Justice Department officials reached out to the networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials tied to the White House TV pool. The pool is a longstanding arrangement in which the networks split the duty of filming the president and then distribute that footage to other news outlets.
The networks’ move came last month, shortly after President Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from covering the White House, citing “fake news.” In response, the five networks that make up the White House press pool joined together and effectively stopped covering the president altogether, framing the decision as pushback against what critics described as the administration’s anti-First Amendment actions.
The coordinated move was spelled out in a Sept. 21 message to pool subscribers from the White House TV pool chair, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Boughton wrote. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
Now, the Justice Department is taking a hard look at whether that collective decision crossed a legal line.
Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Covington made the department’s position clear in a statement.
“Members of the television press pool have proudly boycotted covering White House events,” Covington said. “Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.”
Covington stressed that the department is simply following the law where it leads.
“The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws,” she said.
The Times, for its part, cast the inquiry in a far more critical light, calling it “a profound escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the White House press corps.” The paper also claimed the probe fits a pattern of the administration using the levers of government against those it views as foes in the media.
The investigation adds another chapter to the escalating standoff between the White House and the press outlets that cover it.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico are currently suing the Trump administration, arguing the ban violates First Amendment principles. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the ban, but that order is set to expire on Tuesday, setting up a key moment in the fight.
The outcome of the Justice Department’s inquiry could carry major implications for how the networks coordinate coverage of the president going forward. The pool system has long relied on competing outlets working together to share footage, and the antitrust probe now puts that cooperation under federal scrutiny.
At issue is whether commercial competitors acting in concert to halt coverage amounts to an illegal group boycott under the Sherman Act, as the Justice Department has suggested may be the case.
Attorneys for the networks have not yet responded to reports of the DOJ investigation.
