Joe Battenfeld: Donald Trump's media ban just following lead of Barack Obama

Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald on Sep 23, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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BOSTON — President Donald Trump is not the only pol to punish reporters for biased coverage or reward them for sycophantic stories — former President Barack Obama and other Democrats have repeatedly tried similar tactics.

Trump is just following the lead of Obama, who refused to give Fox News the same access at the White House, banning them from landing interviews and asking questions during press scrums.

Trump is also just taking a page out of the Michelle Wu-Maura Healey playbook, doing interviews only in their safe spaces — which in Wu and Healey’s case is public radio. Wu recently excluded the Boston Herald from an embargoed press conference which other outlets were invited to.

“So he’s not banning media outlets,” Vice President JD Vance said Monday. “What he’s doing is saying, ‘We’re not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda.’”

It’s not right for any politician — whether it’s Trump, Obama or Wu — to shut out a media outlet for what they perceive as unflattering coverage.

But it’s total hypocrisy for the media to now throw its arms up in protest when Democrats have used the same rationale.

The Obama administration in 2009 shunned Fox’s Sunday morning news show, claiming the network was “not a news organization.”

“We’re going to take the media as it comes,” Obama said. “And if the media is basically operating as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing, and if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another. But it’s not something I’m losing a lot of sleep over.”

Or as then-White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said, “We don’t think we need to treat (Fox News) as though they are a news organization the way other news organizations here are treated.”

Now that Trump is shutting out CNN and a few other liberal outlets like MSNow and Politico, the mainstream media is pulling its collective hair out.

The media has responded in petty fashion by ending the White House pool, thereby punishing those they allegedly serve – the American public.

But Fox News did not run to the courts to fight Obama like CNN, MSNow and Politico are now doing to get back their press passes from the Trump administration.

The news network instead embraced its outsider status and its ratings soared after the Obama snub, as viewers flocked to see its feisty coverage. Fox became the independent voice speaking truth to power — or at least that was its brand.

Fox became the go-to network for people who didn’t want to be fed fawning coverage of the president.

Obama repeatedly rewarded the media outlets like CNN by giving them exclusive interviews and calling on them at press conferences, shutting out reporters from Fox.

CNN and other outlets in exchange did not ask tough questions of Obama, giving him essentially a free pass.

But it only made Fox more determined to be the outlaw network.

Healey and Wu have made it a monthly practice to give exclusive interviews to friendly public radio, something it doesn’t do for other outlets, definitely not the Boston Herald.