I barely slept Friday night after President Donald Trump issued his threat.
The president posted on Truth Social that he intended to ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House. But neither he nor his staff explained exactly how it would be implemented or enforced.
My colleagues were able to stay on the White House grounds Friday until about 8:30 p.m. before all reporters were required to leave around 10. I was scheduled to work the weekend shift, and I knew there was a chance my press badge would be confiscated. So I prepared. I stayed up until 1 a.m. thinking through what I would need for live reporting in the morning. I woke up at 6:30, half an hour before our photographer was due to arrive.
At 7:02 am., he texted: “They took my pass and I’m back outside.”
“I’m rushing over,” I texted back.
My producer and I decided to walk into the White House together. As we entered a security checkpoint, I didn’t recognize either of the Secret Service officers on duty. We exchanged “good morning” pleasantries and the two men continued having a casual conversation.
We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, which has been closed to the public amid heightened security precautions and increased threats on the president. When we arrived at the press entrance on the North Lawn, we noticed two media cameras set up at the end of a path designated for passholders, perhaps anticipating our arrival. I flashed my badge and was waved through, as usual. Inside, I greeted the officers and placed my phone into a bucket and through the conveyor belt to be screened.
Then I scanned my badge and entered my pin. The oval-shaped reader blinked red. I tried again, then a third time. The officer looked at his computer and asked my producer to scan hers. The keypad blinked green, and she was allowed through.
“Ma’am,” he said to me, “your badge has been disabled.”
I asked why. He said he wasn’t sure; such matters were “above” him, he said. I pointed out that the producer and I work for the same network. He and another officer looked at a computer screen. “She’s good to go,” one said. “Yours is disabled.”
Before I left, I asked if I could keep my badge. The agent said I could not.
I know the Secret Service officers were just doing their jobs. The entire interaction was polite, professional and not hostile in any way. I was confused why my producer was able to get in and I wasn’t, thinking perhaps I was being targeted for being an on-air reporter. But that thought was fleeting since our photographer also had his badge taken. At this point, my only conclusion was that it must be a mistake that our producer was not removed from a list of journalists from MS NOW, CNN and Politico. My hunch turned out to be right.
I asked the White House press office for comment on the events of the morning, and specifically asked why our producer was allowed access but our photographer and myself were not. A spokesperson replied: “Refer you to the president’s comments yesterday.”
It’s a familiar response. The president often announces major decisions on social media without advising his staff ahead of time. When reporters ask follow-up questions, the press team typically refers reporters back to Trump’s posts or his public remarks. When our White House team asked officials Friday what had prompted the ban, no one seemed to know, and Trump didn’t appear to have run the idea past his top advisers before posting it.
His comments hadn’t clarified much. In the Oval Office on Friday, he told reporters the decision was the result of “cumulative stories over the last few years” from all three outlets. He didn’t cite a single story. He said he was tired of “fake news,” a label he has applied to nearly every mainstream news organization, and repeated the debunked claim that Politico had received government funding during the Biden administration. (Some federal agencies paid for subscriptions to its services.) Journalists, he argued, had no right to publish what he considers false stories “day after day,” and “somebody has a right to keep them away if they’re going to write false stories all the time.”
Asked what the ban would entail, the president said he didn’t want reporters from the three outlets “in my office,” “here,” and that it would “go as far as you can.”
I walked out of the White House alone, knowing that cameras were rolling. My head was held up: I knew I had done nothing wrong. Soon after, MS NOW issued a statement saying it would take any steps necessary to stop this attack on the free press. “We will continue to report on the President, the administration, and the issues that impact the American people,” the statement said.
Shortly after, I went live on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” with hosts Jonathan Capehart and Eugene Daniels and Elise Jordan. As the day progressed and other journalists began to capture photos and videos of us, it was uncomfortable to be the story, rather than the one simply covering it.
So much was running through my head. I thought about the many miles I’ve traveled with the White House press corps — running up hills, sprinting to the steps of Air Force One just to shout a question, standing in the blazing heat in Ghana and Vietnam waiting for world leaders to arrive, squeezing into cramped press vans. All of it to do one thing: document history.
I thought about all my colleagues who taught me what it means to fight for press access, even if it’s only asking press assistants to get a few inches closer to be in position to ask a question or take a photo. I thought, too, about how presidential aides, past and present, have worked to protect reporters’ access on foreign trips to countries with a history of restricting press freedom. As I reported from across the street after being denied entry to the White House, I heard the U.S. military color guard preparing for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit next week.
What message does this send to the world? What is the message to the leader of an authoritarian country with virtually no press freedom, where the media is controlled by the state?
The question I get most on social media is why the press corps doesn’t stand up for each other.
The answer is: We do. My phone was flooded with texts from press corps colleagues on Saturday with messages of solidarity.
On Friday, reporters from NBC News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, AFP and the Washington Examiner all pressed Trump about his commitment to the First Amendment, the legality of the ban, and whether he was attempting to intimidate the press.
As Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said on Saturday in her defense of me and my colleagues at CNN and Politico, “It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office.”
We are an incredibly competitive bunch, but we’re in the same boat with the same goal.
Still, the question remains how far will that solidarity go? CNN is a part of a five-network television “pool” that is assigned to offer independent coverage of the president and offer video, as well as audio, of his public appearances to the rest of the press corps. What happens next week, when CNN’s journalists are scheduled to cover the president? Will another network simply take over? Last year, after the White House barred reporters from the Associated Press from covering certain events, there were no organized boycotts from fellow journalists for crackdowns on press access. Will this time be different?
I was reluctant to write this piece, because this story isn’t about me. What happened to me and my colleagues at Politico and CNN could have happened to any member of the White House press corps. And when the story is about us, the attention turns away from the issues that impact everyday Americans, and right now, there are so many. We will keep covering them, whether from inside the White House gates or outside them.
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