2 Utah Republicans push back against Trump's media ban

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Sen. John Curtis and Rep. Blake Moore pushed back on President Donald Trump's decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.
Curtis said limiting press wouldn't be found "in any handbooks on leading the free world."
A spokesperson for Moore said the congressman disagrees and said media should have access unless they commit slander or libel.

SALT LAKE CITY — Two members of Utah's all-Republican congressional delegation are pushing back against President Donald Trump's decision to ban three media outlets from the White House.

KSL reached out to all six members of Utah's congressional delegation and the governor for comment on the media ban. Spokespersons for Gov. Spencer Cox, Sen. Mike Lee and Reps. Burgess Owens and Mike Kennedy did not immediately respond. Rep. Celeste Maloy's office declined to comment.

But Sen. John Curtis and Rep. Blake Moore, who holds a high position in GOP House leadership, pushed back against the president's actions.

"I don't think you'd see restricting the press in any handbooks on leading the free world," Curtis said.

A spokesperson for Moore added: "Congressman Moore does not agree with this recent decision and believes that, unless they are committing slander or libel, all media should have access to the White House."

What did the president do?

President Donald Trump barred the three news outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — from the White House beginning over the weekend. The White House claimed the bans were the result of "years of false reporting," and Trump on Monday said in a social media post it was "instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America."

"It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!" he added.

CNN was also removed from its pool duties, where major news networks take turns covering the president during his day-to-day appearances and share their footage with other outlets. Four other major TV networks — ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC — said they will not cover presidential events as a pool in solidarity with CNN.

"When the president does anything today, there will be no TV camera with the president that is broadcasting and sharing this footage," CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins said.

Other outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, announced they would temporarily not print or share photographs taken by pool journalists.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a lawsuit Monday, saying the ban was based on the content of their coverage and represented a violation of the First Amendment.

"This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles," the lawsuit states, claiming the president banned the outlets as retaliation "for past news coverage because he deemed it 'negative' and chilling future reporting about him and his administration's policies and actions."

Experts react

The president has had a "longstanding relationship with the news media, both acrimonious and collaborative," said Ed Carter, a communications professor at Brigham Young University who is also an attorney.

So why is Trump trying to ban reporters from these outlets now?

"It could be to distract from political problems or unpopular policies and events," Carter said. "This is one in a long line of attacks on journalists that seem to be motivated by President Trump's ulterior motives."

Carter added that Trump "depends on news coverage" and has benefited from it throughout his life.

"His fame, his notoriety and celebrity is largely due to news coverage," he said.

Joel Campbell, a former journalist and retired journalism professor at BYU, said Trump's ban seems "rash" and "knee-jerk."

"Obviously, that's offensive to the First Amendment when you decide three outlets are producing news that you find as fake, or whatever you want to call it," Campbell told KSL. "That content discrimination is really offensive to the First Amendment."

Campbell said the president's ban "seems unconstitutional." He also praised the solidarity of the other networks which decided not to cover presidential events.

The biggest loser in this entire debate, Campbell added, is the public that needs independent information about the activities of the White House.

"Unfortunately," Campbell said, "it's the autocrats, it's the tyrants of the world, that want to manage and manipulate the media."

Contributing: Heather Peterson

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.