Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump is giving reporters the same kind of access as their predecessors, prompting concern about coverage after Election Day.
The White House Correspondents' Association expresses “profound concern and consternation” with the two presidential candidates in a letter sent last Tuesday to their campaigns. It asks them to fix the situation for the remainder of the 2016 campaign, noting that it would make it easier to set up press pool coverage, post election day.
Neither candidate has set up a “protective pool,” which most presidents have had, with a rotating group of reporters providing colleagues with accounts of the candidates’ day-to-day and minute-to-minute activities.
Such an arrangement “has a decades-long, bipartisan precedent, anchored securely to the principles of the First Amendment,” the association wrote.
In 2008, President Barack Obama and John McCain began their protective pools in June and July respectively, the association said. Mitt Romney began a protective pool in August 2012 and George W. Bush began a protective pool in September 2000.
The correspondents’ association said it would expect the incoming president-elect to have such an arrangement, saying it would be “a particularly serious breach of historical precedent and First Amendment responsibilities” to go without one.
“It would prompt consistent and public criticism from the White House press corps,” the reporters’ noted.
The letter notes that the Trump campaign is “lagging behind the level of press access” provided by Clinton, as reporters with Trump do not travel on the same plane -- and at times are not even in the same state as the candidate.
“The campaign has indicated its desire to provide as much transparency and access to the press as possible,” the board wrote. “There is a simple solution: establish a protective pool and allow the press pool to travel on the candidate’s plane like every major party nominee in recent memory, including the current Democratic nominee.”
There are shortcomings, too, with Clinton’s campaign, the association said, noting that reporters covering her at the 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York were not permitted to observe her leave the event and were not notified that she’d left.
“That failure of transparency about Secretary Clinton’s whereabouts and condition created an unnecessary panic about her health situation that dominated the news cycle for days,” the group wrote.
It noted that Clinton’s campaign plane does include traveling press, but falls short of a protective pool.
“We urge the Clinton campaign not to use the Republican nominee’s posture on transparency and press access as the bar against which it measures itself,” it said.
The Clinton campaign acknowledged receipt of the letter and said it would be in touch, association president Jeff Mason said. The Trump campaign did not respond to the letter.
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