The major networks are set to resume their collective television coverage of President Donald Trump on Sunday, even though the White House blocked CNN from participating in the TV pool over the weekend, according to four people briefed on the deliberations.
Five networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — collaborate to provide footage of Trump’s daily events, covering the president on a rotating basis and sharing footage with one another and other global news outlets.
Throughout the past week, the quintet had suspended the TV pool in an effort to force the administration to reinstate CNN, after Trump barred its journalists from the White House grounds. The networks went so far as to refuse to air footage of portions of Trump’s summit with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
But under a tentative plan that began taking shape late Friday, the other four networks would return to performing pool duties, the people said. Each time that CNN comes up in the pool rotation, the group of networks will decide whether to provide a substitute crew. Otherwise, CNN’s slot will be left unfilled, and Trump will not receive major network coverage.
The networks could agree to suspend the White House TV pool at any time, the people said.
The major networks declined to comment Saturday. In a previous joint statement, they wrote that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Resuming the TV pool effectively hands Trump more control over the list of news outlets granted close-up access to many of his events. It also ensures that viewers will receive high-quality broadcast coverage of the president.
On Friday, the administration allowed CNN to provide pool footage for Trump and Xi’s visit to the National Archives. CBS agreed to provide a pool camera for Xi’s arrival that morning at the White House.
But the administration backtracked later in the day, telling CNN it could not serve as the pool for Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday. The TV pool went dark again as the other networks declined to provide a substitute.
In private discussions over the weekend, network leaders said that Trump’s decision to restart the barricade of CNN had left them choosing among several unpleasant options.
If the TV pool was indefinitely suspended and an emergency or crisis occurred, there would be no cameras to film Trump, leaving the public relatively in the dark.
CNN’s tussle with the administration is also wending its way through the courts, which could take months to resolve. A legal dispute involving The Associated Press, which the administration barred from the White House press pool in 2025, has dragged on for more than a year. Network leaders believe it would be untenable to suspend TV coverage of Trump for a significant length of time, according to two of the people briefed on their discussions.
(A federal court quickly restored the AP’s access, but an appeals court mostly reversed that decision.)
Network leaders stressed that their new plan for pool operations was ad hoc: If the White House was making last-minute decisions about which outlet could attend certain presidential events, they said, then the network pool would do so as well.
Trump’s standoff with the press began Sept. 18, when he abruptly banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, saying he disliked their coverage.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the White House to reinstate the outlets for two weeks.
The order, from Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington, made clear that CNN journalists should be given back their hard passes, the press badges that allow access to the White House grounds. But the ruling included no explicit instructions about whether the administration had to allow CNN back into the smaller TV pool, which is allowed to cover the president in tighter spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One.
The next hearing in the case has not yet been scheduled.
For now, the president does not appear to be backing down. He posted on social media Saturday, in all capital letters: “Fake News should not be allowed in the White House!!! It has gone on far too long, at a tremendous cost to our country.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
