Trump Campaign Ejects Bloomberg Reporter from Event
A Bloomberg News reporter was barred from a Trump campaign event in Iowa on Monday.
The Hill, citing a Trump campaign official it did not name, said Bloomberg senior White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs was escorted out of the news conference in West Des Moines as part of a campaign policy concerning the media outlet.
“It was cordial, but she wasn’t credentialed per our policy,” the campaign official said.
Trump was in Washington and didn’t appear at the event.
In December, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said Bloomberg reporters would not be allowed into campaign events.
The trigger for that policy was an announcement from Bloomberg News that it would not conduct investigations of Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who owns the media outlet, or any of his Democratic competitors — but it would continue to investigate Trump.
“The decision by Bloomberg News to formalize preferential reporting policies is troubling and wrong,” Parscale said then, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Since they have declared their bias openly, the Trump campaign will no longer credential representatives of Bloomberg News for rallies or other campaign events,” he said. “We will determine whether to engage with individual reporters or answer inquiries from Bloomberg News on a case-by-case basis. This will remain the policy of the Trump campaign until Bloomberg News publicly rescinds its decision.”
That announcement led to some back-and-forth on Twitter over the outlet’s capability for objectivity.
Media outlets should be independent and fair, and this decision proves that Bloomberg News is neither.
The @GOP stands with @TeamTrump and will no longer credential Bloomberg representatives. https://t.co/nxWiBbEI0s
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) December 2, 2019
Bloomberg News editor John Micklethwait hits back: “The accusation of bias couldn’t be further from the truth. We have covered Donald Trump fairly & in an unbiased way since he became a candidate..and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign.”
— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) December 2, 2019
Bloomberg News had no comment on the expulsion of Jacobs.
The outlet’s policy was criticized by DePauw University professor of communication Jeffrey McCall in an Op-Ed for The Hill.
“The reality is that Bloomberg News blundered with its campaign coverage rules,” he wrote, saying the policy “looked like it had been conceived in kneejerk fashion by a couple of random guys at the end of the bar.”
McCall said Bloomberg News should have devised a structure ensuring the candidate and the newsroom were isolated from each other.
“The main outcome of the Bloomberg News campaign coverage blunder is that it gives Trump yet another opportunity to bash the mainstream, east-coast based big media outlets as unfair,” he wrote, adding, “In the greater scheme of things, this Bloomberg News commotion is more of the hair-on-fire chaos that characterizes the media world in the era of Trump.”
“Bloomberg News would be wise to reconsider and then rescind their self-imposed rules about covering the presidential campaign, and then challenge the Trump campaign to restore access for Bloomberg reporters to events and rallies,” McCall said. “Otherwise, Bloomberg News just leaves a door open for Trump to exploit in his ongoing battle with the press.”
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