Trump’s media blacklist considered ‘inappropriate’ by majority of voters

Seventy-one percent of U.S. voters in the latest CNN/ORC survey of U.S. voters described Trump’s decision to deny nearly a dozen news organizations access to his campaign events as “inappropriate,” including 53 percent of Republicans. Twenty-eight percent of respondents approved of his treatment of the press.

The survey results come less than 10 days after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee added the Washington Post to the growing list of media outlets he no longer allows to cover his rallies and press conferences.

“They have no journalistic integrity and write falsely about Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest,” the Trump campaign said of the Post.

Other publications who have had one or more reporters blocked from covering the billionaire include Buzzfeed, Politico, the Des Moine Register, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, Gawker, the New Hampshire Union Leader, Foreign Policy, the Daily Beast, the New York Times, the Sun Sentinel and Univision.

Wall Street Journal reporter and White House Correspondents Association President Carol Lee unleashed on Trump last week over his campaign’s treatment of the press.

“Any nominee for the highest office in the country must respect the role of a free and adversarial press, not disown the principles of the First Amendment just because he or she does not like the tone or content of their coverage,” Lee said in a statement.

Democrats and moderate voters were the most likely to condemn Trump’s denial of press credentials to certain publications. Eighty-seven percent of Democratic respondents called the behavior inappropriate, while 76 percent of moderates and 70 percent of independents agreed. A slimmer majority of conservatives (55 percent) said the same.

Survey results were based on a sample of 502 registered voters interviewed between June 16-19. The margin of error is 4.5 percentage points.