Mercenary spyware is sold to governments as lawful interception and lands on journalists and dissidents, and it works because the target cannot inspect the device. Version 2.0.0 of the Zero Breach Toolkit, published on November 1, 2026, turns that check into a double-click program in 27 languages, and the report it prints names what it could not read.
Donald Trump banned the news network CNN, the MS NOW channel and the news outlet Politico from the White House, accusing the three outlets of writing “FICTION and LIES” about his administration and naming no specific story; Secret Service agents, the federal agency that guards the president and answers to the Department of Homeland Security, confiscated their passes on 19 September 2026 and, on 21 September, the three newsrooms asked a court to restore access. The case reaches the bench with a 1977 precedent, with the press pool at its centre and with the five networks refusing to cover the president: the network assigned to feed the signal to every other outlet was one of those barred, and the only video of events became the government’s own.
Venezuela’s National Assembly approved on Tuesday, in a first reading, the bill for a partial reform of the Constitutional Law against Hatred, at the request of the executive. The reform replaces prison sentences with fines and community work and sets out clear administrative procedures for applying the law; the text drops the word “hatred” and is to be renamed the Law for Democratic Coexistence, Peace and Coexistence. Opposition lawmaker Amelia Belisario said the law “served to persecute dissent.” The non-governmental organization Espacio Público warned that the reform keeps mechanisms that can restrict freedom of expression, by leaving sanctioning procedures in the hands of the ministry with jurisdiction over justice.
Ethiopia’s Media Authority announced on November 2 the indefinite suspension of the print and online licenses of the Reporter, the country’s last privately owned Amharic newspaper, accusing it of violating media laws and ethics and publishing content against the national interest; in October, undercover police detained journalists Samuel Getachew and Amanuel Gebremedhin, jailed for eight days, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a text republished by AllAfrica.
Al Jazeera journalist Montaser Nassar was detained in raids near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, according to the network itself.
Czech public television and radio workers launched a one-day strike on Tuesday against a government plan to cut financing and move funding to the state budget, which they call an attempt to hurt the broadcasters’ independence and viability. The media would receive about 15% less money than they do now, which could likely lead to layoffs, limited production and program cancellations. The bill passed a preliminary vote last month and now awaits further debate in parliament. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš denies an attempt to control the media and says the change fulfills a campaign promise to lighten the financial burden on the population: “There is no fight over democracy. Nobody wants to take over the public media or bring them under state control,” he said. Michal Kubal, chief news editor at Czech Television, said the strike is unprecedented in the history of Czech public service media. The strike has the backing of labor unions, university rectors, churches, international media organizations and hundreds of athletes.
A report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published on Monday warns that 86 percent of crimes against the press remain unpunished, with more than 1,600 journalists murdered worldwide over the last twenty years — a 20 percent increase in the past three years; the Middle East remains by far the most dangerous region, with 97 journalists killed there over the past two years, many in connection with the war in Gaza.
Israeli soldiers blindfolded, handcuffed and arrested Al Jazeera correspondent Montaser Nassar during a raid on his home in Dura, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported.
Cartoonist and graffiti artist Yasser Mounbir was sentenced at first instance in Casablanca to four years in prison for insulting the king and fined 40,000 dirhams, with his lawyers announcing an appeal.
Cartoonist and graffiti artist Yasser Mounbir was sentenced on Friday, October 30, to four years in prison in Morocco over caricatures of the king, according to Le Monde.
UNESCO counted 189 journalists killed worldwide in 2024 and 2025, the highest number since 2014/2015, when it recorded 215 cases. Of the total, 127 deaths (67%) occurred in countries that are conflict zones, up 24% from 2022/2023. Palestine accounted for 62 deaths, one third of the total.
Al Jazeera condemned the Israeli authorities' decision to extend a ban on its operations in Israel for another 90 days, including the suspension of its broadcasts, the closure of its offices and the restriction of access to its websites and digital platforms. The network says the extension was based on secret material that neither the network nor its lawyers could see or contest, and calls for the ban to be lifted immediately.
A confirmed total of 189 journalists and other media workers lost their lives in 2024-2025, 20 percent more than during the previous biennium and the highest number since 2014-2015, according to the biennial report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). The impunity rate reached 86 percent in 2024-2025, its first rise in more than a decade, and 127 of the dead, 67 percent of the toll, were in conflict zones. Drone strikes killed 50 journalists, 40 percent of killings in conflict zones, a threat Unesco called disturbing.
Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, Sergei Sokolov, announced in a video published on Friday that the newspaper is ceasing to exist, saying that Russian authorities and special services forced the newsroom to end its work, The Guardian reported. Also according to The Guardian, Sokolov was taken in for questioning this month and Russian authorities searched his home in a criminal case involving a colleague, journalist Oleg Roldugin, who was arrested in April.
Novaya Gazeta’s newsroom announced the paper’s end: it will switch off the lights in its headquarters where it has lived for 30 years and shut down the servers on November 9, according to Le Monde; the paper says Russian authorities expelled it from its headquarters and disabled the donation system, according to EFE, in a text republished by Infobae.
The UK Home Office canceled Swedish national Andreas Malm's Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) on Wednesday, described as a pro-Palestine academic, according to Al Jazeera; the government said his presence in the UK “is not considered to be conducive to the public good”.
The journalist Lina Attalah was released from custody after the payment of a three million Egyptian pound (US$53,400) fine, her lawyer, Hassan al-Azhari, said, according to Le Monde. An Egyptian court ordered the closure of Mada Masr and fined Attalah three million Egyptian pounds (US$53,400) for running a website without a license, Al Jazeera reported. During the release procedures, she learned that she had been sentenced in absentia in 2024 to one year in prison, on charges of publishing false news and running an unlicensed website.
An Egyptian court convicted Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah on Tuesday of running a website without a licence and ordered the independent outlet closed, according to Middle East Eye. Attalah was taken into custody after the verdict pending bail, Reuters reported in a text republished by KFGO.
Six citizens sued Donald Trump on Monday, arguing that banning journalists from the White House violates the public's right to independent news. The suit argues that when Trump bans news organizations from White House premises, it is not only their rights that are violated. Unlike previous legal action against the president, the plaintiffs are ordinary citizens, shifting the focus from news gatherers to news consumers and implying a much larger pool of stakeholders, according to PBS.
Thousands of people protested in Prague on Sunday against the plan to abolish household licence fees and fund public media through the state budget, after the lower house fast-tracked the bill in a rare overnight vote on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.
Gabon’s government said it has lifted a ban on social media imposed eight months ago, a move that triggered widespread criticism at the time, according to the BBC.
Gabon restored social media on Saturday, October 24, after more than eight months of suspension, in an announcement by the Higher Authority for Communication (HAC), according to Le Monde. Facebook and TikTok, the most used networks in the country of nearly 3.5 million inhabitants, as well as YouTube and Instagram, were cut off for eight months, while WhatsApp worked partially.
US President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he may move the White House press corps to a different location, in a social media post, according to Reuters, in text republished by Investing.com. He dismissed a report that he planned to remove the press room and restore a historic swimming pool on the site, saying he had never “even thought to do such a stupid thing”. The New York Times reported that Trump had urged then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt in August to move news conferences out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, an idea that was never implemented.
Armed settlers arrived in two vehicles near the Ajja roundabout, south of Jenin, and demolished a memorial to Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The agency reported the destruction on Friday and attributed it to Israeli colonists.
A US judge has ordered President Donald Trump to answer questions under oath in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC by December 11, the BBC reported. Trump is suing the broadcaster over a Panorama episode that edited together two different sections of a speech he gave before the riot at the US Capitol in 2021. Trump cancelled a previous deposition on October 16, citing “matters of national importance” while he was campaigning in Georgia.
The State of Israel told the High Court of Justice that journalists should still be barred from entering Gaza without military escort, citing security risks, the Jerusalem Post reported. In a September 27 request, the Foreign Press Association (FPA) argued that conditions had changed substantially, including through arrangements allowing international aid workers to enter and move within Gaza.
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee denounced the settler attack that left Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine badly beaten and needing surgery as a “despicable act of terror”, The Guardian reported.
The Trump administration asked Israel to stop settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, who was attacked by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, underwent surgery on a finger that was nearly detached in the attack, her daughter said.
The Washington Post condemned the beating of its photographer Heidi Levine and the theft of her equipment by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and urged a thorough investigation and follow-through from the authorities, in a statement by executive editor Matt Murray cited by RT. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented at least 16 incidents involving 35 Palestinian, Israeli and international journalists in the first eight months of 2026 alone, figures already above those recorded in 2025.
Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine is one of two people injured and taken to hospitals in the Ramallah area during the attack by Israeli settlers on the annual olive harvest in the village of Abu Falah, in the West Bank, on Friday, according to Palestinian medics cited by Reuters, in a text republished by Al-Monitor. Dozens of masked settlers dressed in black burned olive trees and threw rocks at Palestinians in a coordinated attack on the village’s harvest. Le Monde reports that the Washington Post journalist was beaten by settlers.
Israeli settlers attacked olive harvesters in Abu Falah in the West Bank on Friday, injuring Palestinians and American photojournalist Heidi Levine of The Washington Post, according to The Times of Israel. From her hospital bed, Levine said she was pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly, and that her flak jacket and helmet likely saved her.
Israeli digital advertising agency Discover-Tech spied on internet users through a sprawling network of online ads that it used to track targets and help hack their devices, the research groups Citizen Lab and Confiant said, in a report by The Jerusalem Post. Its services gave Candiru, an Israeli spyware company blacklisted by the US government, and other Israeli surveillance firms access to advertising platforms run by Google, Comcast, Russia’s Yandex and others. According to Citizen Lab, a powerful form of Candiru spyware delivered through Discover-Tech’s ads compromised 45 Windows devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera between 2024 and 2025, confirmed through network logs from the media group. Google said it had collaborated with Citizen Lab and Confiant on the investigation and kicked Discover-Tech off its ad platforms for “systematically violating our policies.”
Turkish police raided Halk TV’s headquarters in Istanbul on Wednesday morning, stopping live broadcasts and preventing staff from entering the building, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The outlet said on X that authorities assigned an administrator to take over Halk TV and, according to news reports, the raid is linked to a criminal investigation into owner Cafer Mahiroğlu. Police arrested 11 employees and took control of the opposition broadcaster, according to G1 Mundo.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) detained a Hokkaido Shimbun reporter in Sakhalin on suspicion of espionage, according to Jiji Press, in text republished by Nippon.com. The detained man is a Japanese national, a correspondent in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of the Sakhalin region, and was reported to have been transferred to Moscow. Russia's Foreign Ministry said it regretted that Tokyo was using correspondents to carry out spying, according to Reuters, in text republished by The Japan Times.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said a correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the Russian Far East, was detained on suspicion of espionage, transported to Moscow and placed in custody, according to TASS. Moscow's Lefortovsky District Court placed the journalist under arrest under Article 276 of the Criminal Code, which covers espionage.
The Taliban suspended the BBC’s FM radio services in Afghanistan, alleging “repeated violations” by the broadcaster, without detailing them, according to Khubib Ghufran, spokesperson for the Taliban government’s information and culture ministry, who spoke to Reuters. The BBC confirmed the suspension and said it is working with the Afghan authorities to address the situation, noting that millions of people across the country rely on it for accurate news and information.
Israeli forces wounded a child with live ammunition during attacks in Ramallah and Al-Bireh, in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry says. Troops entered several Palestinian nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs) offices and the courtyard of the Palestine Medical Complex, according to Middle East Eye. Wafa identified two injured journalists: Palestine TV’s Khaled Mattawa, who sustained a hand injury from a sound bomb, and Sky News Arabia’s Firas Lotfi, who suffered a shrapnel wound to his foot.
Brazilian journalist Rogério Tomaz Jr., known for his criticism of the government of Argentine President Javier Milei, was barred from entering Argentina on Monday upon landing at Aeroparque airport in Buenos Aires, according to Agência Brasil. Migration authorities cancelled his permanent residence and imposed a five-year re-entry ban.
Israeli authorities barred British journalist Secunder Kermani from entering the country on Sunday, in a clampdown on international journalists reporting on the country, according to Middle East Eye. Kermani said he had just arrived in Tel Aviv for coverage ahead of the Israeli elections and was only then told that the authorities were denying him entry to the country.
OpenAI said it shut down two influence operations from Russia and Iran that used ChatGPT to create fake journalist personas, according to France 24. The Iranian operation used seven fake journalist profiles to plant articles in media outlets around the world. The Russian operation co-opted people in Latin America to run a fake think tank against Ukraine.
Armed Israeli settlers beat AFP photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh on Tuesday, aged 58, leaving him requiring hospital treatment as he covered ongoing settler violence against West Bank olive farmers, according to AFP. Ashtiyeh suffered bruises to his head and torso and was taken by ambulance to a hospital; the attackers also took his camera equipment. The violence took place despite the presence of at least a dozen Israeli soldiers around 500 metres away, according to photographer John Wessels, who was also threatened with a firearm. AFP’s global news management condemned the attack and demanded a full investigation.
The United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, dismissed the Israeli claim that 170 journalists killed in Gaza were “terrorists”, saying there is “not a shred of evidence”, and said she will soon publish a report on the matter, accusing Israel of disinformation.
The Israel Defense Forces said that 170 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were identified as journalists after their deaths were members of armed groups, according to The Times of Israel. According to the military, 118 were active in Hamas's military wing and 49 operated in Islamic Jihad, two were members of the Popular Resistance Committees and one was in the Mujahideen Brigades.
Hong Kong police arrested two people, including a journalist, for allegedly acting “with seditious intent”, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Local media identified the detainees as independent journalist Tang Ho-wing and activist Lee Ying-chi. They were detained for investigation under a homegrown national security law passed in 2024.
Israeli attacks on Wednesday night killed a 33-year-old Palestinian and wounded others, including a minor, on Salah al-Din Street, north of Khan Younis, according to Middle East Eye, citing the Wafa news agency. Gaza's government media office reported that Palestinian journalist Muhammad Abdel Aziz al-Najjar was killed in a separate attack on Wednesday.
The White House barred CNN from flying on Air Force One for President Donald Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday. The broadcaster was to serve as the television pool and no outlet was listed as replacing it, meaning there would be no television pool coverage of the trip. A federal judge has since ruled that barring news outlets from the White House was likely unconstitutional and ordered the administration to let them back in, at least for now.
The White House barred CNN reporters from an Air Force One flight with President Donald Trump on Saturday, September 26, 2026, according to The Washington Post, in a report published by G1. A federal judge had ruled on Thursday, September 24, 2026, that the Trump administration restore those news outlets’ access to the executive branch.
Reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House on the morning after Federal Judge Timothy Kelly's order immediately restoring the three outlets' access for 14 days; the ruling ordered the immediate return of the outlets' credentials, as set out in the court order, with reports of passes confiscated by the United States Secret Service.
Federal judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to return the credentials of CNN, MS Now and Politico for 14 days for lack of due process, and the three outlets were allowed back into the White House on Thursday afternoon, 24 September 2026, many hours after the ruling. Even after the order, reporters said they were blocked at the gate and had their passes confiscated; the White House said access was restored from 9:07 a.m.
The United States Department of Justice told a federal court that the president can restrict reporters’ access to the White House, including on the basis of their coverage, and that “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right”, according to the filing submitted late on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, and reported by the Times of India. The filing says the administration can deny entry to restricted areas for “viewpoint-discriminatory reasons” and that the First Amendment does not give journalists an independent right of access. It answers the lawsuit filed by CNN, MS NOW and Politico, whose credentials were seized on Saturday, 19 September; the outlets are seeking a temporary restraining order, with a hearing set for Wednesday, 23 September, before US District Judge Timothy Kelly, according to the Times of India, the Associated Press and MS NOW. The White House gave the three newsrooms until Friday, 25 September, to contest the decision and the facts it cites, and the letters mention reporting on a bunker beneath the White House east wing, on depleted US missile-defence interceptor stocks and on FBI leak investigations, according to the Times of India.
US President Donald Trump told CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins as he entered United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York on Tuesday morning, 22 September 2026: “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me.” Collins had asked when the war with Iran would end, citing a poll that found two-thirds of Americans do not think the country is winning the conflict, and replied that the UN had credentialed the network for the event, according to CNBC, The Guardian and USA Today. The exchange came after Trump announced on Friday, 18 September 2026, that he was revoking the White House credentials of three outlets — CNN itself, MS NOW and Politico — accusing them, without pointing to specific stories, of reporting “FICTION and LIES”. The ban took effect on Saturday, 19 September, when Secret Service officers, the federal agency that protects the president, seized the press passes of journalists from the three outlets. On Monday, 21 September, the three companies sued in federal court in Washington, alleging a violation of the First Amendment; US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ordered the Justice Department to respond to the request for an injunction and scheduled a teleconference hearing for Wednesday, 23 September. Of the five television networks that share White House pool coverage — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — four decided to suspend the pool, according to CNBC.
A six-second clip presented as the moment a Houthi missile struck Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport circulated on social media from September 20, 2026, and it is generated by artificial intelligence, according to a fact check by Agence France-Presse published on September 22, 2026. A reverse image search led to a longer version of the video posted on March 19, 2026, by Yemeni politician Ali Hussein Al-Bujairi and labelled “manipulated media” by X itself; the fact check points to signs of synthetic origin, among them a man apparently walking through a glass door at the three-second mark and a mobile phone floating by another man’s ear at the eleven-second mark. There were no official reports of an attack on the airport: the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted the missile, and the fire on September 19, 2026, consumed a Saudi Aramco fuel tank at a depot next to the terminal, according to The Jakarta Post and the BBC. A fact check by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on September 17, 2026, identified another clip, nine seconds long and with more than 340,000 views, presented as strikes on Abha and also generated by artificial intelligence, along with a video of an ambush that is in fact April 2024 footage with commentary from a 2018 football match spliced in; in both cases, the detection platform Hive Moderation flagged the imagery as synthetic. The Deutsche Welle fact check notes that the difficulty of observing the conflict independently leaves room for this kind of content, and a Misbar verification on September 21, 2026, examined the same Riyadh airport video.
US District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Justice Department to respond by Tuesday, September 22, to the request by CNN, MS NOW and Politico for a temporary restraining order against the White House ban on the three outlets, and scheduled a videoconference hearing for Wednesday, September 23, at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, according to CNBC. The outlets are seeking the immediate restoration of the permanent access credentials revoked on September 18, when they were barred from the White House complex; the suit claims violations of the First Amendment and of due process.
The four US television networks that share White House coverage with CNN — ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC — said they will stop airing events designated as presidential pool coverage, in support of CNN, which the administration barred from the grounds, according to The Guardian and the Hindustan Times. “Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, Fox News’s Washington bureau chief and the pool chair, wrote in an email to pool members, as quoted by The Guardian. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.” The pool is the arrangement under which the five networks take turns covering presidential events and distribute the material to other outlets. Without it, Monday’s ribbon-cutting for the White House’s new helipad went out without audio: on the official feed, Trump’s remarks were drowned out by the sound of the helicopter engine, according to the Hindustan Times. All five networks, CNN included, signed a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” The Washington Post said it will hold back its photographs of presidential events until after midnight Eastern time, and The New York Times said it would not publish or distribute images from the White House still photography pool on Monday. The print, radio and wire pool kept following the president’s movements.
The White House launched a 24-hour streaming channel called “TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station” on Monday, with programming starting at 7 p.m. ET, available on the White House website and its YouTube channel, according to the Hindustan Times. The channel’s description says it gathers “the Trump Administration’s biggest moments”, with top videos, major remarks and highlights streaming “24/7 and updated in real time”. The launch came two days after President Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House access, and on the same day the White House pulled CNN from the television pool rotation, leaving the pool with no network assigned to cover presidential events, according to CNN.
California attorney general Rob Bonta’s office released on Monday the terms of the settlement Paramount Skydance reached with 12 states to clear its $110bn merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, reported earlier by Bloomberg and Reuters. The agreement, pending court approval, requires the company to release at least 30 films a year for five years — 20 of them wide releases in the first two years — to spend an extra $1.5bn on US production and to create a $47.5m fund for displaced workers, alongside an independent monitor and separate negotiations for cable channels to preserve competition. Paramount also accepted a news editorial independence board for CNN and CBS. ‘The settlement is not a vote of support for this merger,’ said Bonta, who led the states’ suit in July after the Justice Department approved the deal in June.
US president Donald Trump hosted New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, on Monday and praised a rival he once called ‘my little communist’: ‘Hopefully, you’re going to be a great mayor,’ Trump said at a press conference after about an hour of closed-door talks, according to AFP, the Hindustan Times and USA Today. It was their third meeting since Mamdani’s election. The mayor said he raised the fate of Haitians who lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and now face deportation; Trump acknowledged the issue was raised and made no commitment. The two agreed to start technical talks between City Hall and the White House on federal funding for the 12,000-home project over the Sunnyside Yard rail depot in Queens, which Mamdani puts at more than $21bn in federal grants. Mamdani said he told Trump all press would be welcome at their joint appearance, on the same day major TV networks kept up their boycott of the president’s coverage.
The lawsuit filed by CNN, MS NOW and Politico against the ban on the three outlets from the White House has been assigned to US District Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Donald Trump nominated to the federal bench in Washington in 2017 and who has already ruled against the president in a press case, according to The Hill and USA Today. Trump responded on Truth Social saying the outlets ‘drew a great Judge’ and that Kelly was ‘sadly, appointed by “TRUMP”’ — a reference to the judge’s 2018 ruling restoring the credentials of then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. ‘In other words, almost without question and, as usual, we’ll go for appeal,’ the president wrote. The administration argues that access to the White House is a privilege rather than a right, and the lawsuit asks the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and restore the credentials of the barred reporters.
The White House photo pool joined the television boycott on Monday, saying it would not publish or distribute images of President Donald Trump’s events until midnight, according to The Guardian and the BBC. The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Associated Press described the move as part of a ‘collective effort’ in support of CNN, Politico and MS NOW, which were barred from the White House on Friday after Trump accused them of writing ‘fiction or lies’. The five networks that make up the TV pool — CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC and CBS — had already suspended coverage of pool-designated presidential events, and with no pool audio, viewers watched Trump deliver a speech in silence at the unveiling of the White House helipad. CNN, Politico and MS NOW sued the administration in federal court on Monday; Trump called the outlets ‘Third Rate Clowns’ and said his team would appeal ‘almost without question’.
Paramount Skydance reached a settlement on Monday with California and eleven other states that had sued to block its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Bloomberg and Reuters reported. According to Bloomberg, the states secured independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN; the Los Angeles Times reports the deal includes $1.5 billion in California production and a commitment not to sell either studio. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed foreign investors to hold 49.5 percent of the company’s equity — 38.5 points of it from sovereign funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, which are putting in $24 billion with no voting rights.
The five major networks in the White House press pool — CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC and CBS — said they would stop covering President Donald Trump’s events, and CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the administration on Monday to restore their access to the building, according to Deadline and Politico. The pool chair and Fox News Washington bureau chief, Bryan Boughton, told subscribers that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President” and that there would be no replacement for CNN, barred on Friday along with Politico and MS NOW. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks a temporary restraining order to restore credentials and names White House communications director Steven Cheung, chief of staff Susan Wiles and Secret Service Director Sean Curran.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico said on Monday they will sue the United States government over the revocation of their journalists’ White House credentials, according to The Associated Press (AP), Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP). In a joint statement, the three newsrooms said they had notified the government and would file the suit in the federal court in Washington to protect their First Amendment rights, adding that the case could see emergency hearings as soon as this week. The credentials were revoked on Friday without notice or process, according to the outlets. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the move is “an assault on the FAKE NEWS”, and not on the free press, “which I cherish”. The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) called for the immediate restoration of access and said a standard used to exclude one outlet over its coverage could be applied to any other in the future.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s administration to overturn the ban on the three outlets from the White House, according to CNBC and Variety; the companies are seeking a temporary restraining order to restore their journalists’ credentials, seized on Saturday, according to Reuters and the BBC.