DOJ Investigating Fox News, CNN, Broadcast Networks for Possible Violations of Federal Law
TV networks pictured a refusal to broadcast what President Donald Trump was doing last month as a moment of media solidarity.
The Department of Justice is wondering whether it violated anti-trust laws.
Last month, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton, who chaired the TV pool covering the White House at the time, ruled that pool coverage would not take place after Trump put CNN, Politico, and MSNOW in time out and banned them from the White House.
CNN is a member of a five-network pool covering Trump that includes ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, and Fox News. The pool network shares White House news with other networks.
The ban on CNN, MSNOW, and Politico has been temporarily put on hold by a court, but now the Justice Department is looking into whether the brief suspension of pool coverage was illegal, according to The New York Times.
On Friday, federal officials demanded information from the networks in the pool, the Times reported, citing sources it did not name.
Justice Department representative Emily Covington said the networks “proudly boycotted covering White House events.”
“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” Covington wrote.
“The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws,” she said.
Although a judge ruled CNN cannot be blocked from covering Trump at the White House, it is blocked from serving as the pool reporter when Trump is on Air Force One.
Trump administration officials continued to block the network from acting as the TV pool when the president travels on Air Force One.
At the time, the pool chair said, due to Trump “preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” there would be “no replacement pool put in place,” according to CNN.
After the networks waged war on Trump, White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro said Fox should pay for being part of the pack.
“Fox is not real news. It is CNN with better lighting, a fake slogan and a flag graphic. Stop watching its dangerous drivel,” Navarro wrote in an Op-Ed for The Washington Times.
“A network that sells itself to conservatives has blacked out a Republican president and put out a press release about it, arm in arm with CNN. Fox is the more dangerous of the two, because it pretends to wear our colors,” Navarro wrote.
“Fox’s own Trump derangement syndrome is new. Its CEO Suzanne Scott keeps removing the people most willing to honestly cover the MAGA agenda. Lou Dobbs was canceled in February 2021. Tucker Carlson was out in April 2023,” he wrote.
“Maria Bartiromo was gone this month, after she passed her producers’ July 15 text from Fox Business programming up the chain,” he noted. Fox did not want its reporters to cover Trump’s indictment of the 2020 election.
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