Three news organizations that had been barred from the White House for several days returned on Thursday, after a judge granted CNN, MS NOW and Politico a reprieve in an extraordinary confrontation between President Donald Trump and outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

Yet media coverage of Trump’s White House was scarcely typical.

On a day of considerable prominence, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was visiting Washington and intending to attend a state dinner, no major American network was broadcasting live coverage.

After the White House barred CNN from a rotation of five major U.S. broadcast outlets that take turns shooting and sharing video, the other four — in a show of solidarity — were still refusing to take part in the so-called video pool.

It formed part of a tumultuous day at the White House and in court.

Initially, in the morning, journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied entry.

A Secret Service agent had confiscated their credentials as part of the ban.

Following the ruling in favour of the outlets in the early hours of Thursday, White House operations officials were notified to restore access to the affected reporters, but said they needed time to locate, reactivate and deliver their entry badges.

The process took over two hours, according to an administration court filing.

In his decision to provisionally lift the ban, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the three outlets’ access.

He said they had met the legal thresholds to obtain a temporary restraining order and were likely to succeed in showing that their press passes were revoked without due process.

The ruling refrained from addressing CNN’s exclusion from the White House video pool.

The White House did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Kelly — whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who, in a similar case in 2018, ordered a CNN journalist's access restored — said the government must have clear standards for conduct that would lead to revoking a press pass.

He called the standard of objectionable reporting outlined in letters that the White House sent the outlets "so vague it hardly does the trick."

The judge also made clear that he did not accept the administration’s argument that the news outlets’ reporting endangered national security — and noted that Trump himself had not used that argument at first, focusing solely on what he called negative coverage.

Theodore Boutrous Jr., the news outlets' attorney, said the judge's swift ruling had vindicated freedom of the press, due process, and the rule of law.

"I think we're going to end up stronger because of this, and this tactic of just attacking the press, attacking individual journalists, is going to be discredited," Boutrous said in an interview on MS NOW Thursday afternoon.

"The law is just clearly on our side here," he said.

The temporary restraining order — usually meant to preserve the status quo while the court reviews the case more closely — expires in two weeks.

The judge gave both sides until Oct. 5 to file their arguments over whether he should consider issuing a longer-lasting ruling called a preliminary injunction.

Kelly said he “intends to rule expeditiously” on the preliminary injunction request.

Boutrous argued at the hearing that renewed access was urgently needed, saying the ban caused irreparable harm to the outlets at a time of momentous news events.

“We’re at war,” he told the judge.

“We have world leaders coming to Washington.”

In his argument, Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik reiterated the administration's position that the president has the right to decide who is allowed into the White House.

"Access to the White House constitutes a privilege rather than a right," Velchik said.

In contending that Trump was not engaging in viewpoint discrimination — the government singling out specific media outlets for the content of what they say or publish — Velchik said the president had criticized other news organizations, but not banned them.

He noted, for example, that Trump had called ABC “the worst.”

On Wednesday, following the hearing, the major networks declined to broadcast footage of Trump unless they were assured that CNN would be allowed back into the video pool.

At Joint Base Andrews, where the president formally welcomed Xi, correspondents from Fox News, CBS and NBC were in attendance but were not filming video.

Other television outlets whose crews were present, as indicated by the markings on their tripods and cameras, included NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News and LindellTV.

Reporters said it furnished its clientele with video coverage of Trump greeting Xi, enabling them to determine whether to broadcast it.

“We did not stream the coverage on our own platforms, including APNews.com or our YouTube channel,” said an AP spokesman, Patrick Maks.

In an advisory to customers, AP said it would not have independent video coverage of meetings between Trump and Xi.

It noted that a U.S. government handout live feed could be accessed on the White House website.

Reporters was among roughly 50 groups that filed an amicus brief before Wednesday’s hearing, urging the court to immediately restore the three outlets’ White House access.