Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her likely general election opponent, Donald Trump, both pose a threat to the free press, the White House Correspondents Association warned Thursday.
The WHCA’s outgoing president, Carol Lee, and its incoming chief, Jeff Mason, said Thursday they have been “alarmed by the treatment of the press in the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Both Trump and Clinton have had their own issues with the press. Trump has threatened reporters and entire news outlets with banishment from his events and legal action, while Clinton tends to avoid journalists altogether, and hasn’t held a formal press conference in more than 200 days.
“The public’s right to know is infringed if certain reporters are banned from a candidate’s events because the candidate doesn’t like a story they have written or broadcast, as Donald Trump has done,” they wrote in an op-ed published by USA Today.
“Similarly, refusing to regularly answer questions from reporters in a press conference, as Hillary Clinton has, deprives the American people of hearing from their potential commander in chief in a format that is critical to ensuring he or she is accountable for policy positions and official acts,” they added.
In June, Trump announced his campaign would deny press credentials to Washington Post reporters in retaliation for how their newsroom has covered his presidential bid, although he gave them a 30-minute exclusive interview this week.
His announcement against the Post earned a sharp rebuke at the time from the WHCA.
In May, the Trump campaign added the Huffington Post to its supposed no-fly list. In March, the Trump campaign barred reporter Ben Schreckinger from a primary election event in Florida. And in January, Trump’s team denied BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins entry to an event in Des Moines, Iowa.
On the other side of the aisle, things haven’t been much better for campaign reporters. Clinton and her team keep close tabs on reporters at campaign events, regularly exchanging notes about their whereabouts, and she has not held a press conference since December 2015.
Her reluctance to speak with members of the press has become so glaring, in fact, that the Washington Post launched a widget this month to track how many days it has been since her last presser.
The WHCA warned Thursday that neither candidate bodes well for the press.
“The United States will not have a free press if its president gets to choose which journalists and which media organizations are allowed access to the executive branch. We will not have a truly free press and an informed electorate if the president doesn’t believe he or she should be held accountable to inquiries from the media,” Lee and Mason wrote.
“It is a reporter’s job to cut through the rhetoric from candidates, scrutinize whether their policy proposals would benefit Americans in the way they claim and question the viability of their promises. If we cannot do our job, then the American people cannot do theirs,” the wrote.
“That’s why we are concerned both with the rhetoric directed at the media in this campaign and the level of press access to the candidates. Both Clinton and Trump can do better,” they concluded.
