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Romney Campaign Tries to Block Reporters - NYTimes.com
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Romney campaign is renowned for its hyper-disciplined approach to the news media. Question-and-answer sessions with reporters are exceedingly rare. Aides avoid on-the-record briefings. And the candidate’s latest outreach to voters, a series of casual meetings with middle class Americans, is shielded from public view.
But on Wednesday morning, the campaign took that restrictiveness to a new level, leading to a brief kerfuffle with reporters and, later, an apologetic clarification.
After Mitt Romney finished delivering a speech, campaign aides told members of the traveling press corps that they could not join the audience or approach the rope line where Mr. Romney shakes voters’ hands and engages in casual conversation with them.
Access to such interactions has long been a zealously protected staple of presidential campaign reporting, allowing reporters to capture unscripted moments and pose questions to the candidate (who typically ignore or pretend not to hear them.)
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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Romney campaign is renowned for its hyper-disciplined approach to the news media. Question-and-answer sessions with reporters are exceedingly rare. Aides avoid on-the-record briefings. And the candidate’s latest outreach to voters, a series of casual meetings with middle class Americans, is shielded from public view.
But on Wednesday morning, the campaign took that restrictiveness to a new level, leading to a brief kerfuffle with reporters and, later, an apologetic clarification.
After Mitt Romney finished delivering a speech, campaign aides told members of the traveling press corps that they could not join the audience or approach the rope line where Mr. Romney shakes voters’ hands and engages in casual conversation with them.
Access to such interactions has long been a zealously protected staple of presidential campaign reporting, allowing reporters to capture unscripted moments and pose questions to the candidate (who typically ignore or pretend not to hear them.)
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