Fox, Marx, And The Five Network Cartel Veto

Fox, Marx, And The Five Network Cartel Veto

By Peter Navarro | The Daily Caller | September 24, 2026

Something happened inside the White House press corps this week that has exposed how concentrated television news has become. The incident has revealed how a Five Network Cartel with veto power can blatantly suppress news to the American public from the White House and President himself.

Start with the backstory: The White House television “pool” consists of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox — the Five-Network Cartel. They rotate daily to determine which network will provide live coverage of events at the White House, including the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the South Lawn, and other West Wing venues.

When President Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House for their chronically biased coverage and lies, the Five-Network television pool summarily shut down pooled coverage of the President.

Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, serving as the pool’s rotational chairman, announced the action to journalists: “Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President. This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

Think about what that meant. CNN was denied its scheduled turn, so Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC did not simply substitute another camera crew and keep reporting. Instead, all five networks agreed that there would be no camera at all. Fox — the one member capable of breaking the appearance of five-network unanimity — chose coordination rather than independence.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins praised Fox for “banding together in solidarity.” The Associated Press likewise used the “S” word in praising the action.

If “solidarity” has a communist ring, there is a reason. Karl Marx himself used it repeatedly. In an 1872 speech, one English translation records Marx declaring: “Let us think of the basic principle of the International: Solidarity.”

But there is an even more delicious historical wrinkle here. When the Trump White House excluded CNN’s Collins herself from an event in 2018, then-Fox News president Jay Wallace issued a statement declaring: “We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists.”