A White House post bars three newsrooms from the grounds
On 18 September 2026 the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social an immediate White House ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, calling their work fiction or fake news. CNN called the move an illegal assault on press freedom. The BBC noted reporters from CNN and Politico were still on the grounds shortly afterward; Al Jazeera added that he later named the New York Times and the Washington Post as next.
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A post, not a printed rule
BBC correspondents Bernd Debusmann Jr and Max Matza and Al Jazeera’s staff desk both dated the post to 18 September 2026. Trump wrote that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House at once. The BBC said he gave no examples of the fiction he alleged; Al Jazeera recorded the fake-news label and, later, Oval Office remarks that the outlets write negative copy to diminish Republicans. He later called the ban very simple and did not say how it would work, the BBC added. Whether staff would be kept off the grounds stayed unclear in that account.[1], [2]
Who was still inside
The BBC reported that Politico and CNN journalists were still on the White House grounds shortly after the announcement, and that a CNN crew was travelling with Vice-President JD Vance to and from an Iowa event. CNN, in that same BBC piece, called the move an illegal assault on American press freedoms. Al Jazeera did not contradict those on-the-ground details; it spent its extra inches on who Trump named next. The ban, as of those dispatches, was a social-media order whose physical edge had not been shown.[1], [2]
Times and Post named next
Al Jazeera reported that, asked what he meant by other fake-news outlets to follow, Trump named the New York Times and the Washington Post. Asked why he was acting now, he pointed to cumulative coverage. The BBC piece did not carry those two titles in the same way; it stayed on the three names in the original post and on the unclear mechanics. The two reports therefore share the same Friday order and split on the sequel list. No court test of the order appears in either article.[1], [2]
