United Kingdom

London, 23 September 2026. The British press is reconstructing hour by hour the mechanics of a crisis between Donald Trump and American editorial teams. The BBC first details a little-known institution, the White House "pool", a grouping of media outlets that have been sharing coverage of presidential trips for decades; on the television side, it brings together CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC. The dispute begins on Friday, 18 September 2026, when Trump announces that he is banning CNN, Politico, and MS NOW, which he accuses of spreading "fake news" and "fictions and lies" about his team. On Saturday, 19 September 2026, the journalists from these three outlets discover that their badges have been deactivated. On Monday, 21 September 2026, the five television channels in the pool suspend their coverage of presidential events en bloc, including Fox News — a rally that the BBC judges to have "constitutional implications".

The Independent is also reporting in parallel the launch, on the same Monday, of "Trump TV", broadcast continuously on the White House's official YouTube channel. The communications service, through the voice of Kaelan Dorr, presents it as "a 24/7 livestream of the Administration's greatest successes, without a filter", reproaching the press for having "reported inaccurately, or not at all, the historic successes" of the government. The newspaper notes a slow start: 8,000 viewers at the peak on Monday evening, falling to 4,000, then 1,600 people on Tuesday morning in front of archive images of the decree renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Democratic elected officials and internet users are comparing the channel to a state television channel, citing North Korea, China, and Russia.

The Daily Mail is documenting the president's personal tension: arriving at the UN with Melania Trump on Tuesday, he tells a CNN journalist "you shouldn't be here", before adding that the network had promised to no longer cover him. The three excluded media outlets have, according to The Independent, filed a complaint against the administration, estimating the ban to be contrary to the Constitution.

This accumulation of facts — the mechanics of the pool, audience figures, presidential altercation — outlines, from a London perspective, a conflict that is primarily political between the American executive and its editorial teams, rather than a case that has yet to be settled by the justice system.