The Justice Department perverts antitrust law to punish the press

By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta · October 12, 2026

The executive branch turns antitrust law against television networks that paused coverage, an abuse of process that leaves no shelter when opponents hold the same tool.

An antitrust statute stretched to punish the press

The Department of Justice has opened a formal antitrust investigation into five United States television networks: ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News, according to reporting by NPR and CNBC. The target of the inquiry is the broadcasters' temporary cessation of pooled White House coverage last month. CNBC reports that the probe examines whether this editorial solidarity violated the Sherman Act. RTÉ reports a Justice Department spokesperson stating that group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate federal law. That claim is a dangerous perversion of a statute drafted in the 1890s to break economic monopolies. The Sherman Act was designed to prevent price-fixing and market allocation by commercial cartels. It was never meant to police the cooperative logistical arrangements of news organizations.

The networks share costs, organize coverage, and share footage through a routine arrangement known as the White House press pool, as noted by RTÉ. When the administration revoked the credentials of reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW, citing unfair negative coverage according to NPR and NBC News, the pool took action. As NBC News reports, pool members declined coverage for four days initially and on two subsequent occasions when CNN was blocked from pool duties. This was not a commercial conspiracy to fix prices or divide markets. It was an act of journalistic solidarity in the face of viewpoint discrimination. To label a temporary pause in reporting a group boycott is to drain legal terms of their meaning. Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation rightly pointed out to CNBC that antitrust law has long recognized First Amendment exceptions even when an action has an anticompetitive impact. The invocation of the Sherman Act here is a pretext to penalize outlets that refused to submit to executive credentialing rules.

This maneuver follows a clear historical pattern. As the Jim Acosta credentials revocation demonstrated, the administration has repeatedly used access restrictions to punish critical reporting. In that instance, CNN filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. CNN argued that the revocation violated the First Amendment right to freedom of the press and the Fifth Amendment right to due process. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to return the press pass. Today's dispute follows the same script, but with a heavier club. Instead of merely revoking a pass, the state now deploys the machinery of federal antitrust enforcement against the corporate parents of the press pool. A rule that only works while your people hold power was never a rule. If an administration can investigate broadcasters for withholding pooled coverage, a future administration can use the same statute to investigate any corporate entity whose speech displeases the state.

A federal judiciary must halt this administrative overreach

The immediate catalyst for the networks' pause in coverage was the administration's decision to bar specific journalists from the White House and Air Force One. According to NPR and NBC News, the administration barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and revoked press passes for more than 70 journalists. In response, the affected news organizations filed lawsuits. CNBC reports that a federal judge restored access for the barred reporters on due-process grounds. RTÉ notes that US District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled the credential ban was likely unconstitutional and ordered the administration to immediately return, reinstate, and restore access. Yet, rather than accepting the court's holding, the executive branch turned to the Department of Justice to accomplish through regulatory intimidation what it could not achieve in court.

The administration has previously barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after the outlet refused to use the term "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico." NBC News details that the administration also removed The Wall Street Journal from the pool traveling to Scotland in 2025 following a report on a 2003 birthday card sent to Jeffrey Epstein. CNBC also notes that Trump and his allies filed lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BBC News over alleged reporting inaccuracies or biases. Trump also moved to rescind approximately $1.1 billion in previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These actions form an unbroken chain of hostility toward independent media. The current antitrust probe is simply the latest effort to bypass constitutional limits through administrative harassment.

The federal court will issue a permanent injunction against the Justice Department's antitrust investigation into the television networks. It will rule that the use of the Sherman Act to penalize editorial solidarity during a press access dispute constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint retaliation. This prediction rests on bedrock constitutional principles. The First Amendment protects the press precisely so it can report without fear of state reprisal. When the Department of Justice deploys civil and criminal antitrust provisions against broadcasters for standing with their colleagues, it commits a gross abuse of process. Legitimacy is a capital stock that spends fast and refills slowly. The administration is burning that stock with every retaliatory subpoena. That leaves behind a weakened legal framework that will offer no shelter when the tools of state power are finally held by their opponents.

The Justice Department perverts antitrust law to punish the press

An antitrust statute stretched to punish the press

A federal judiciary must halt this administrative overreach

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