Media Must Expose Trump's Chinese State Media Embrace

While CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were barred from the White House grounds Thursday morning — in defiance of a court order — China Global Television Network and Xinhua News had full access. Chinese state media filmed Xi Jinping's arrival at the White House. American outlets did not. The entire U.S. TV pool boycotted coverage in solidarity. As CNN's Kaitlan Collins put it: "The Chinese communist state media is allowed onto the White House grounds — but we are not."

This is not the first time. In his first term, Trump barred the U.S. press pool from the Oval Office while allowing Russian state media to photograph his meeting with Russian officials. The pattern is unmistakable: a president who calls American journalists enemies of the people rolls out the red carpet for the propaganda arms of authoritarian governments. Trump himself told reporters this week that China has "the friendliest press corps" — as if that were a compliment rather than a confession.

We call on the media to cover Trump's differential treatment of American and foreign state press not as a press access story, but as what it is: a president who is more comfortable with the controlled media of America's adversaries than with the free press of his own country. The public deserves reporting that names that preference plainly — and asks what it reveals about whose interests this administration actually serves.