Bluntly, Trump banning CNN is a violation of the First Amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...

And the boycott is to deliberately inflict a narcissistic injury to Trump. His attempt to create a state-owned news outlet is an attempt to reduce/minimize that injury. Personally, I think the best defense by the media would be to display his senile rambling conversations - show everyone how insane his actual words are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_injury

From Trump's first political strategist in 2018:

> "The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

> For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...

> the boycott is to deliberately inflict a narcissistic injury to Trump

OK, so that completely contradicts your statement that they do "everything they can to appease the orange guy".