A dangerous gap has appeared in the television market: for a little while, some pool cameras were not providing the president’s preferred subject. Investigators must determine how the market could have produced this distressing shortage of him.

Axios reports that DOJ launched an antitrust investigation into ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC after the networks suspended White House pool coverage to protest Trump’s ban on three news organizations. An investigation is not a finding of unlawful coordination. The absence of a presidential close-up has nevertheless acquired an impressive federal audience.

Welcome to our imaginary television-market inquiry. Nothing said by its investigators below is a real quotation. The fictional inquiry begins with a wall of screens displaying the president. One screen is briefly blank. The examiner reaches for a magnifying glass. At last, an irregularity.

Please Define The Consumer

The imaginary examiner asks who has been harmed. A viewer says she would like reliable reporting and access for journalists who ask awkward questions. The examiner thanks her for participating in the preliminary identification exercise. Unfortunately, she has identified the wrong consumer.

A second viewer wants several genuinely different news organizations. Excellent, says the examiner. This inquiry is deeply committed to variety. The president may be filmed from the front, from the left or from a slightly more flattering distance. A vigorous market should accommodate all three.

The viewer asks whether refusing to provide a pool shot means the networks stopped reporting on the president altogether. Our fictional examiner waves away the distinction. We are examining a particular absence, not every program on every channel. Please do not introduce enough context to make the empty rectangle look smaller.

A technician suggests checking whether the camera is broken. No, says the examiner. The equipment is functioning. That is what makes the incident so troubling: somebody appears to have made a decision about where it should point.

A Rich Choice Of Camera Angles

In our parody demonstration, a remote control offers several buttons. Each selects a different picture of the same man. This proves that the customer has options. An additional button lets the customer complain that the man is not being shown enough, whereupon the remote becomes a federal matter.

The fictional examiner admires the arrangement. A competitive news market should be robust enough to withstand criticism, political pressure and the occasional instruction to make itself more robust by doing exactly what the person being covered wants.

In our fictional final photograph, the photographer widens the shot and the three excluded news organizations enter the frame. The examiner stops smiling. The outlets are asking questions, which is a distressingly active interpretation of being scenery. He offers a compromise: their cameras may stay, provided their point of view does not. Competition is restored. Please crop out the competitors.