Justice Department Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Five TV Networks Over Pool Pause

The Justice Department said Saturday that its Antitrust Division is investigating whether ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC broke federal competition law when they jointly paused their White House television pool coverage last month. A department official told NBC News that civil investigative demands went out to the networks on Friday. The New York Times first reported the inquiry.

“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” department spokeswoman Emily Covington said in a statement, adding that the division wanted to determine whether the outlets had broken antitrust law. CBS News noted that it was unclear how the department would apply the Sherman Act, a long-standing law aimed at monopolistic conduct, to a pause in news coverage.

The dispute began in mid-September, when President Trump revoked White House credentials for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, citing what he called their “FAKE NEWS” reporting. White House letters to the three outlets said certain articles threatened national security and violated standards of decorum. When CNN was dropped from its turn in the pool rotation, the other networks declined to take its place. In a joint statement, the five said the public needs accurate, independent information and that no administration should shut out an outlet over its reporting. The pause overlapped with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington.

The pool is a decades-old arrangement, recognized by administrations of both parties, in which a rotating network records the president’s appearances and travel and shares the footage with other subscribers, including Newsmax, One America News Network and C-SPAN. During the pause, individual networks, among them NBC News, kept covering White House events that were open to the press.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued, arguing that the ban violated the First Amendment. Federal Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order that restored their credentials and has since extended it to Tuesday while he considers the case. CBS News reported that the White House still keeps CNN and Politico out of the Oval Office and off Air Force One.

NBC, CBS and CNN declined to comment on the inquiry, according to NBC News. ABC said it had not yet been notified but expected to be, and Fox did not respond, the same report said. Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called the investigation “another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” arguing that the First Amendment protects news organizations’ decisions about what to cover.

The administration’s position rests on a real legal principle: news companies compete for audiences and advertisers, and rivals who agree together to withhold a service can face antitrust scrutiny in any industry. Critics answer that the pool itself is a long-tolerated cooperative arrangement among competitors, and that a shared decision not to fill in for a barred colleague is an editorial judgment rather than a commercial one.

The inquiry lands as the industry consolidates. CBS and CNN now share a corporate parent, Skydance, after Paramount completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this week.