Locked out: The Clinton campaign denied access to the designated print pool reporter David Martosko (right)
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There was a problem: Hillary's press staff said DailyMail.com wasn't welcome, and they decided it at the last minute.
The pool was asked to send a different reporter. It was too late to substitute someone else in the Live Free or Die state at that point, so I said I'd show up anyway.
Six hours earlier I had received emails from two different Clinton media liaisons – including the former secretary of state's traveling press secretary, Nick Merrill – telling me where to show up and when.
So what happened? That's the nagging question.
Monday morning I showed up at 7:45 in a parking lot where I was to hop on a Clinton campaign van for a drive to the town of Rochester, where the first event would be.
A very junior staffer told me I couldn't climb aboard: I wasn't 'on the list.'
No matter – I'm paid to chase stories, not to take no for an answer. I got back in my rental car and followed them to Rochester.
On the way, I spoke with Merrill for 10 minutes. He gave me a handful of reasons for the sudden rug-pulling.
At first it was because the campaign didn't want some foreign press outlets participating in the pool when others were giving them 'blowback' about being shut out of events when space is limited.
OK, so DailyMail.com is owned by the Daily Mail newspaper from England but the US content is not EDITED by that newspaper, it is edited in New York and currently has nearly 200 employees growing at about 50% a year – and more US online readers than every big city newspaper in America other than the New York Times.
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The Clinton campaign hired two passenger vans to drive reporters to Rochester, NH on Monday morning but refused to let me board them, saying I wasn't approved to attend the morning event
(The traveling press pool welcomes all credentialed outlets, whether they're from the U.S. or Antarctica. The Guardian and AFP, from the UK and France respectively, are already part of it.)
Perhaps they realized that wasn’t going to fly because next they claimed the campaign was trying to follow the example of the White House pool, and by that standard we should have been excluded.
(DailyMail.com is part of what's called the 'supplemental' White House pool. Although our excellent White House correspondent, Francesca Chambers, has the same permanent credentials as her counterparts at The New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN.)
Ultimately, Merrill said they just wanted time to figure things out. Just enough time, I thought, for me to leave New Hampshire.
The bottom line is that for whatever half-baked reason, the Clinton campaign has decided that it wants to control which reporters, from which news organizations, can come along for the ride and report their impressions of what’s going on.
That's not okay. It's the kind of thing that raises questions about transparency and launches let-them-eat-cake metaphors.
The Clinton campaign asked the press to set up the pool. But just like the White House pool – which is run by the White House Correspondents Association, not the Obama administration – Merrill and his team don't get to pick and choose who's on duty.
(That's decided by a rotating schedule.)
I showed up in Rochester on Monday morning, found the YMCA where the Clinton event was being held, and walked through the front door. A Secret Service agent wouldn't let me go any further.
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Clinton's Secret Service detail drove her to New Hampshire in the famous 'Scooby' van, dropping her off Monday morning for a forum on early childhood education – which DailyMail.com was forbidden to cover
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He sent me to another door, where the agent in charge of Clinton's protection detail heard who I work for and said, 'Oh. No.' I was sent back to door number one.
The first agent called a campaign staffer, and then told me that a final decision had been reached: I couldn't come in.
He also told me that for security reasons, I couldn't walk down the hall to use the bathroom.
'Hit the woods,' was his advice.
The question remains: Why?
As well as its huge US audience, DailyMail.com has a larger online audience than any other English-language newspaper in the world. More than 225 million unique visitors come to our website every month. Every political campaign worth its salt should welcome a news organization of our size and influence to show up, kick the tires and report what's going on.
Smaller outlets, too, including those with foreign ownership, should be welcome. Candidates and their handlers shouldn't have a say.
I suspect the decision has little to do with where my employers are from, and a lot to do with how we cover the news.
DailyMail.com doesn't hire stenographers. We chase stories aggressively. We don't pull punches. As a British-owned outlet, we don't institutionally have a dog in the U.S. election fight.
We genuinely haven’t already decided which candidates we want to see get the nominations or which party’s candidate eventually win.
We tell it as we see it – without fear and without favor to any side.
Two days ago, after Clinton delivered a speech in New York City to re-launch her campaign, I tweeted my view of scribes who 'reported exactly, and only, what the campaign wanted them to.' I don’t believe in coincidences.
I've followed Clinton's motorcade as it sped past a small New Hampshire airport, drove all the way to Boston, and deposited her on a large jet that had First Class seats.
I got on the plane and watched her in a Washington, D.C. airport, asking her the campaign’s first questions about the Benghazi terror attack. She met me with stone silence.
After a Clinton photo-op at a bakery in April, I reported that the kitchen staff didn't want to come out and shake her hand.
The nature of Clinton's very first small-scale event in Iowa – an intimate and apparently unscripted coffee-shop meet and greet – was called into question after I spoke to an attendee who said all of Clinton's table-mates were vetted and driven there by a political operative.
I get it: This kind of reporting doesn't make DailyMail.com the Clinton campaign's favorite outlet.
In the land of the free press, it's the journalists acting on behalf of readers – not the politicians acting in their own self-interest – who get to decide what's important and who's hiding the ball. We have to show up to get these stories. They can’t be covered via Google. And that’s why controlling who shows up is the equivalent of torching the free press.
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Via email and telephone calls, I've heard from about 50 political journalists today, including some from nearly every major news brand I can think of.
No one who spoke to me thinks Clinton has a leg to stand on.
Journalists who do this job every day know the stakes: If we're going to elect a president who believes she's above meaningful scrutiny this early in the campaign, just imagine what things might be like in the West Wing in 2017.
That goes for everyone on the Republican side of the ledger too. (Welcome to the race, Jeb! And it’s your turn tomorrow, Mr. Trump.)
At dinnertime I headed to Monday's other 'pooled' press event, a Clinton keynote speech at the Manchester City Democratic Committee's annual dinner commemorating Flag Day.
They shut me out again, meaning that fewer people will learn what she has to say. That's ridiculous. And fans of the First Amendment may as well switch out that flag for a white one.
A press aide told me: 'You're not on the pool list so you need to leave.'
Daily Mail Online has reached out to Nick Merrill, spokesman for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign more than a half-dozen times today and have yet to hear back.
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Although this guy works for a more legit news source now, he used to be an editor for a slanted right wing loon shop, Daily Caller. While I disagree with the campaigns actions barring the guy, I get why they did it. A job as a Pool "reporter" should only be open to reporters, not someone who slants the news like this guy does.
[h=1]Hillary Clinton Bans Pool Reporter With Rich History Of Lies[/h] Written by A media source // Monday, 15 June 2015 16:24 //
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Reporters are going a little bit nuts this morning over the Clinton campaign's decision to ban a pool reporter from that bastion of journalistic integrity, The Daily Mail. While I generally frown on banning reporters from anything, this case warrants an exception.
Here's the guy they banned, whose history includes a decade-long stint of sock puppetry on behalf of corporate interests everywhere
-- Richard "Rick" Berman.
David Martosko's "professional" background is colorful, to say the least.
Before Martosko was exiled to The Daily Mail, he was the editor of Tucker Carlson's hack site, the Daily Caller. He set about the work of ratfcking with a purpose there, lying about Senator Robert Menendez and hookers in order to try and knock Menendez out of contention.
More of his resumé, viaMother Jones:
Before Daily Caller Editor
Original Source
