Washington — President Trump’s move to ban CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House has highlighted the role of the press pool, a rotating group of reporters tasked with documenting and distributing information about what the president does and says each day.
Mr. Trump announced Friday that he would be cutting off the three outlets’ access to the White House, citing what he said was their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!'” CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO jointly filed a lawsuit challenging the move Monday, arguing that the ban violated the First Amendment and their reporters’ due process rights.
They’ve asked the court to immediately order the White House to restore their journalists’ press credentials and access. A hearing on their request is set for Wednesday.
CNN is one of five television networks — with CBS News, ABC News, NBC News and Fox News — that make up the TV pool and was supposed to travel to New York as part of the pool to cover Mr. Trump’s attendance at the United Nations General Assembly. But with CNN kicked off the trip because of the president’s ban, the four other networks decided to suspend the TV pool altogether in solidarity with CNN colleagues.
CBS News, ABC News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News said in a statement Monday, “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should reject a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Here is what to know about the White House press pool:
What is the White House press pool?
The press pool is a group of journalists that rotates daily and covers the president every day. The pool is made up of print, wire, and digital reporters, still photographers, and broadcast and radio journalists who ask the president questions, compose short dispatches about what he does and says, and disseminate information to the broader White House press corps, which can then share those details with the public.
Because some spaces, like the Oval Office or Air Force One, are too small to accommodate all of the reporters who cover the president, the press pool serves as their eyes and ears. The pool travels with the president in the U.S. and abroad, providing a historical record.
At the White House, the pool may on any given day head into the Oval Office or the Cabinet Room when Mr. Trump holds meetings, delivers remarks or signs executive orders. But when the president is traveling, an out-of-town pool flies on Air Force One and accompanies Mr. Trump when he spends weekends at his South Florida resort, holds events across the country, attends summits with allies or meets with foreign leaders overseas.
On some weekends, the pool will load into vans and travel with Mr. Trump to his golf course in Virginia, where they may catch glimpses of him as he exits and enters the White House.
Pool reporters were in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and a car carrying the group arrived at the hospital roughly six minutes after shots were fired, according to an account from Merriman Smith of United Press International.
The press pool was also with President George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001, and a small group of reporters who were part of the broader pool that day went with the president on Air Force One to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in the wake of the terror attacks.
Dana Bash, CNN chief political correspondent, recalled in an interview with “CBS Mornings” traveling with Bush to China and said the 43rd president made “such a big deal about freedom of the press and showing, not just saying, but showing how important it was by having us in as many meetings as he could.”
“He wanted to show China what it is like and how important it is,” she said. “Now here we are and the current president is about to host the current Chinese leader and he is going to do so after having banned three news networks. What does that tell the Chinese, never mind countries around the world? It’s about us, but it’s also about leadership.”
Mr. Trump is set to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday.
Reporters who make up the pool are given a “call time” for when they must arrive at the White House in the morning to start the day. White House press staff then announce a “lid” at the end of the day, which typically signals when there will not be any more movements or appearances by the president for the pool to cover.
Who decides which outlets are in the pool?
For years, the White House Correspondents’ Association, which was created in 1914, selected the news outlets that served in the pool. But in February 2025, the White House announced that its press office would choose the organizations participating in the pool.
The change came after the White House said it would no longer allow the Associated Press in the Oval Office or the press pool after the wire service declined to revise its Stylebook to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Mr. Trump signed an executive order last year directing the name change.
The AP sued over its loss of access, but a federal appeals court said last year that the White House could keep the wire service out of the Oval Office and other restricted spaces. The litigation is ongoing.
Since the White House started deciding which news outlets would be part of the daily pool rotation, several smaller, right-leaning organizations have begun participating. On Monday, for example, Real America’s Voice was part of the out-of-town pool that traveled with the president to New York, and
“The Lila Rose Show,” a podcast, was part of the in-town pool.
Now, on any given day, the pool currently consists of one broadcast correspondent and crew, a “secondary” television correspondent, three print, wire, or “new media” reporters, a radio journalist and four still photographers.
The makeup of the television pool has not changed, though, and is still composed of five networks: CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, Fox News and CNN.
What kind of information is disseminated by the pool?
While the pool consists of more than a dozen different journalists, not all are responsible for writing and sending dispatches from events they attend with the president to be distributed to the press corps more widely.
When the White House took over responsibility for deciding which outlets could be part of the pool, it added “secondary” television and “new media” slots. The reporters working for those outlets may ask questions of the president and attend events open to the pool. But they do not shoot or distribute footage, or disseminate editorial material to the broader press corps.
Reporters in the print pool, which includes over 30 outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail and the Daily Caller, will compile information into emails that are shared with White House Correspondents’ Association members and passed along by the White House press office.
Sometimes, these pool reports may be mundane, like when they share the exact time Mr. Trump left the White House and boarded Marine One. Other times, they include questions asked of the president in the Oval Office and his answers, or who was in the room but out of view of the television cameras.
The designated radio pooler, meanwhile, distributes audio and editorial notes to radio colleagues in the press corps.
For the five broadcast networks that make up the television pool, crews will capture footage of the president that is then distributed to the other members of the TV pool and their affiliates and subscribers. Only these networks have set up and maintained the physical infrastructure to transmit footage from the White House and when traveling with the president to affiliates.
Who covers the cost of expenses for the TV pool?
News organizations pay the expenses for their reporters participating in the pool, including for travel aboard Air Force One. Media outlets also foot the bill for hotels, food and other transportation for their journalists in the pool.
The television networks also provided the machinery — cameras, audio equipment, and transmission infrastructure — installed at the White House that allows audio and video of the president to be transmitted to the public.
What happens when there is no TV pool coverage?
The public got a glimpse Monday of what it looks like when there is no television pool to cover the president.
Mr. Trump participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new helipad on the White House South Lawn. While video footage from the White House showed the president flanked by construction workers, without the television pool mics, viewers couldn’t hear his remarks at all over the sound of the helicopter.
