White House Drops CNN From Air Force One Trip

The White House has barred CNN from covering President Donald Trump's Saturday trip aboard Air Force One, even though the network is part of a standing pool of five broadcasters that take turns accompanying the president and sharing footage with one another. American journalists, citing anonymous sources, were first to report the exclusion, and CNN's own press office later confirmed it.

Besides CNN, the rotating pool includes ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, which take turns sending a camera operator aboard the presidential plane and then share the footage with the other networks. When the White House released its schedule for Saturday's trip on Friday, the document listed no television pool coverage at all. The administration did not respond to reporters' questions about the reason for the decision.

CNN is one of three outlets that Trump stripped of White House access a week earlier, claiming they covered his administration in a negative light. In protest, every other major network stopped covering the president's activities as well.

The barred newsrooms sued the White House, and on Thursday a court temporarily overturned their exclusion — reporters were readmitted to the presidential residence, and television coverage of his schedule resumed. Trump's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping was covered mainly by CBS, but it was CNN that filmed his visit to the National Archives. Whether the networks will respond to CNN's new exclusion from Saturday's trip remains unknown.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz