Court win fails to get CNN, MS NOW into Xi state dinner

CNN and MS NOW reporters say they were denied entry to cover a White House state dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, despite a federal judge's overnight ruling that their access to the grounds must be restored, Grace Eliza Goodwin reports for the BBC.

Judge Timothy Kelly found the White House's ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico was likely unconstitutional, after President Trump barred the three outlets last week over accusations of “fake news”, and ordered their access reinstated for now.

Journalists from the three outlets were allowed back onto the grounds on Thursday morning, but by that evening a CNN reporter and producer, along with an MS NOW reporter, said they were turned away from covering guests arriving for the state dinner, despite having properly submitted reporter’ names for credentials.

CNN said the White House told it, roughly an hour before Xi's scheduled arrival, that it could only send a photojournalist and audio technician rather than a reporter and producer. MS NOW's White House reporter, Laura Barron-Lopez, said she was told by White House staff she could not enter and should contact the communications director.

A White House communications account posted on X that outlets do not “get to have free rein into every part of the White House, every event, and every press call.”

The incident capped a chaotic day in which CNN, Politico and MS NOW all reported being denied entry to the White House on Thursday morning despite Kelly's overnight ruling, prompting an emergency court hearing request; the director of White House Operations told the court that press passes had been restored by 09:45 local time, after which all three outlets said they were let back in.

Networks including Fox News, NBC, CBS and ABC, which had pulled out of White House coverage in solidarity, had not confirmed by Thursday whether they would resume broadcasting from the grounds. The standoff limited some television coverage as Trump welcomed Xi to the White House ahead of the dinner.

In his ruling, Kelly said the ban likely violated the outlets' constitutional due-process rights and cast doubt on the administration's national-security justification, noting Trump had not cited security concerns in his original announcement.

He found CNN, Politico and MS NOW were likely to succeed in showing the White House had failed to provide adequate due process, ordering an immediate return of their press passes and a 14-day halt on enforcement of the ban.

In a Tuesday court filing, the Department of Justice had accused the outlets of threatening national security through coverage of missile stockpiles, construction of the White House ballroom and the recent Republican midterm convention.

Trump first announced the ban last Friday, accusing the outlets of publishing “fiction or lies” about his administration; by Saturday morning all three reported their press badges had been confiscated and access denied.

In a joint statement on Monday, the outlets said they were pursuing legal action to defend the principle that government does not decide what the press reports, a position supported by more than 50 media organisations across the ideological spectrum – including Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal – which filed a joint amicus brief.

The BBC noted a precedent from 2009, when the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from a specific press pool interview, before relenting after objections from other networks in the pool.