The Justice Department is investigating ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News over an alleged boycott of White House events, according to a Daily Mail report published Sunday. Officials have reportedly asked the networks to turn over internal communications and documents tied to their joint coverage arrangements.
The probe focuses on the White House television pool, a long-running system in which broadcasters rotate responsibility for recording presidential events and sharing the footage with other news organizations.
The investigation follows President Donald Trump’s decision in September to bar Politico, MS Now, and CNN from the White House, which he said was a response to what he called fake reporting.
NBC News reported that a DOJ spokeswoman, Emily Covington, confirmed the inquiry on Saturday.
“Members of the television press pool have boycotted covering White House events. Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act. The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws,” Covington said.
The Sherman Act bars certain agreements between businesses that restrain competition. The Daily Mail noted that while television networks are competitors, they have cooperated for years through the pool system to make sure presidential events are recorded and distributed to the broader press corps. Investigators are now examining whether that cooperation crossed a legal line when networks withheld their pool services in protest of the CNN ban.
The move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to scrutinize the media industry that began in February 2025. That scrutiny has coincided with a steep decline in public trust in the press. A survey cited by Breitbart News in February found that just six percent of American adults said they had a “great deal of confidence in journalists to act in the public’s best interests,” marking the lowest level of trust in mass media in more than 50 years.
