Fox News and Wall Street Journal share common ownership
The White House press pool is a rotation of more than a dozen reporters, videographers, photographers and technicians who cover President Trump when he travels or when he conducts events in spaces too small for the full press corps. Pool journalists send written reports, audio, video and photographs to thousands of news outlets, which then distribute the material to readers and viewers worldwide.
A typical pool day at the White House can include covering several events in the Oval Office or other parts of the complex and last many hours.
The television pool, a subset of the broader pool, includes ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News. The networks take turns serving as the primary television pooler each day. Fox News’s parent, Fox Corp., and The Wall Street Journal’s parent, News Corp., share common ownership.
A separate daily print reporter and a radio reporter each distribute reporting on the president’s activities to news outlets. Print-pool reports are circulated widely by the White House press office. The Wall Street Journal is part of the print pool.
For out-of-town trips — whether to Trump’s Virginia golf course or to a foreign country — an even smaller group of journalists travels with the president, joins Trump’s motorcade and rides aboard Air Force One. Their job is to report on the president’s movements and public statements and to ask questions on behalf of the entire press corps. Foreign-pool assignments can last for days, and the cost of the travel is paid by the news organizations. The Journal was the print pooler during Trump’s recent weekend trip to Ireland.
The pool mechanism drew fresh attention this week. The major television networks suspended their rotation on Monday after the White House removed CNN from a planned assignment to cover Trump’s trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. CNN, MS Now and Politico filed suit the same day seeking to overturn a separate ban that bars their reporters from the White House complex.
Trump defended the broader action on Truth Social on Monday, writing: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”
When Trump spoke on the South Lawn on Monday, the White House streamed the event live on its website, but viewers could not hear his remarks because television microphones did not pick up his comments over the noise of a nearby helicopter. Most networks declined to carry the footage live.
The response extended beyond the television networks. The New York Times and The Washington Post said Monday they would not publish or distribute still images for the day taken by their photographers on the pool. NPR said it would continue to cover the White House but would not use pool audio while the standard pool setup remains suspended.
The White House on Monday advertised “Trump TV,” a YouTube offering the administration said would stream 24 hours a day and be updated in real time with announcements and “top past moments.” The Trump administration has also introduced other direct-to-consumer options, including a page on the White House website with links to selected articles about the president’s policies, agenda actions and positive polling.
The administration announced last year that it would determine which news organizations and reporters can be part of the press pool, taking much of that responsibility from the White House Correspondents’ Association, a nonpartisan media group. The administration also took over the seating chart for the press briefing room and added a “new media” seat.