News Outlets Protest Trump's Media Bans, Trump At UNGA, Paramount Merger Settlement
September 22, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readNews Outlets Protest Trump's Media Bans, Trump At UNGA, Paramount Merger Settlement
The country's biggest news organizations are banding together in an unprecedented protest after President Trump banned reporters from CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from entering the White House. The move has triggered a coordinated boycott of shared White House coverage, a new lawsuit, and Trump's announcement that he's launching his own 24/7 video stream called "Trump TV." Meanwhile, the president is set to address the United Nations General Assembly today under mounting pressure at home and abroad, and a major Hollywood merger is one step closer to reality after state attorneys general agreed to a settlement with Paramount.
Media Outlets Unite Against White House Access Ban
The confrontation escalated rapidly when Trump barred journalists from three major news organizations — CNN, MSNBC, and Politico — because he objected to their reporting. In response, the five major TV networks that provide "pool" coverage of the president all announced they would suspend their shared video, audio, and photographs of White House events. NPR, which leads the radio pool, also stopped using audio from White House events until further notice.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Up First from NPR
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (02:02) **News Organizations Protest White House Press Bans** - Major outlets including NPR, Fox News, and the New York Times suspend use of White House pool coverage after Trump bans CNN, MSNBC, and Politico reporters.
- 2 (05:56) **Trump at the UN General Assembly** - President Trump addresses world leaders today under pressure from legal setbacks, political challenges, and the economic fallout of his Iran war.
- 3 (09:30) **Paramount Merger Settlement and Concessions** - Paramount Sky Dance agrees to settle an antitrust lawsuit from state attorneys general, including California's Rob Bonta, to move forward with buying Warner Brothers Discord.
- 4 Standout Quotes
- 5 (04:42) Trump on the media boycott: "They were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn't very worried about that."
- 6 (12:03) Former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya on the Paramount settlement: "They censored and bullied their way to the top here. This is coming at a moment when people already perceive media freedom to be at rest."
- 7 (12:52) Screenwriter Jacob Tobias on the merger: "This mega merger will be used as a chance for the Elison to censor content that is politically inconvenient or doesn't align with what they think America should look like."
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
President Trump addresses the United Nations this morning aiming to cast himself as a peacemaker, a day before Iran’s president speaks, with the war between them still unresolved.
Paramount’s owners agreed to concessions to settle an antitrust lawsuit from a dozen states over their $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal critics say will not protect jobs or the independence of CBS and CNN.
Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Rebekah Metzler, Russell Lewis, Mohamad ElBardicy and Ally Schweitzer.
It was produced by Julie Depenbrock and Nia Dumas.
Our director is Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Simon-Laslo Janssen.
Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
And our Supervising Senior Producer is Vince Pearson.
(0:00) Introduction
(01:56) News Outlets Protest Trump's Media Ban
(05:53) Trump Speaks at UNGA
(09:28) Paramount Merger Settlement
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
More from this podcast
Up First from NPR →