NYT (“Justice Dept. Is Investigating TV Networks Over Trump Pool Coverage“):
The Justice Department is investigating whether the major television networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — violated federal antitrust laws when the group briefly suspended their pooled coverage of President Trump, according to six people with knowledge of the department’s action.
Officials from the Justice Department contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool, the people said. The pool is a longstanding system where the networks share the responsibility of providing footage of the president and distributing it to other news outlets.
Last month, the networks collectively suspended their pool footage of Mr. Trump for several days after the president barred CNN journalists from the White House grounds, which prevented CNN from participating in the pool. Video footage of some major events, including Mr. Trump’s greeting of President Xi Jinping of China, was not carried by any major news station.
In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Emily Covington, described the five networks as having “proudly boycotted covering White House events.”
“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” a core antitrust law, Ms. Covington wrote. “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”
The inquiry by the Justice Department is a profound escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the White House press corps. It also follows a pattern of the Trump administration using the levers of government against its perceived foes in the media. The Justice Department has subpoenaed reporters from The New York Times and seized a laptop from a Washington Post journalist.
[…]
Organized boycotts can be considered anticompetitive if they are aimed at achieving commercial objectives, but not if their primary objective is political speech, said William E. Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
“The critical ingredient in successful antitrust cases is to demonstrate that there is unmistakably a commercial motive and that the commercial motive predominates,” Mr. Kovacic said. “And I don’t think they would ever be able to do that here.”
WaPo (“DOJ investigating five TV networks over White House pool coverage“) frames it this way:
The Justice Department is investigating five major television networks for potential antitrust violations, the department’s top spokesperson said Saturday night, as the Trump administration’s battle with the mainstream press intensifies.
and adds:
The White House pool is a cost-sharing system in which the networks rotate the duty of collecting footage of the president’s daily activities and distributing it to other outlets. The pool’s decision to suspend coverage meant that major TV networks did not carry footage of several major White House events, including Trump’s ceremonious airport greeting of President Xi Jinping of China.
[…]
The Justice Department’s investigation marks a sharp escalation in the administration’s use of its powers against perceived enemies in the press. In addition to Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, the Pentagon has fired staff members from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes who have criticized political influence on the outlet. The Defense Department also introduced stringent rules for journalists accessing the Pentagon grounds, which led to a mass walkout of journalists last year and a court battle with the New York Times.
Federal prosecutors have served subpoenas on reporters from several news organizations, including The Washington Post and the New York Times. And in January, federal law enforcement served a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized several of her work and personal devices.
[…]
CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC did not respond to requests for comment.
Press advocates, however, swiftly condemned the investigation.
“The government should not use antitrust investigations to intimidate news outlets defending press access,” Jose Zamora of the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote on X. “The public’s right to know depends on that access.”
This move seems rather obviously a retaliatory move against the outlets for having dared object to the administration’s illegal blocking of those who had offended Trump. There are surely more obvious targets for the DOJ’s limited antitrust resources.
Given that cost-sharing is part of the motivation for the press pool, it would seem to have “commercial objectives.” But it’s also a function of logistics: there simply isn’t room for every significant news outlet to have reporters, much less camera crews, aboard Air Force One or at every venue the President travels to. And it’s clearly in the public interest to have quality coverage of the President widely available. So, even if the pool is a technical violation of antitrust law, the harm to consumers is de minimus compared to the gain.
