Hillary Clinton reinforced her well-deserved reputation for arrogance and seriously aggravated the media covering her campaign with an unprecedented attempt to choose who will be permitted to act as pool reporter. Annie Linskey of the Boston Globe reports:

 Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign Monday banned a representative from the national print pool from attending any of her events in New Hampshire, a development that will make coverage for her trip to New Hampshire spotty for some of the country’s largest print outlets.

The campaign team for Clinton, who is a former US secretary of state, is not allowing a reporter from the Daily Mail, a London news outlet, to have access to her events. Nick Merrill, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said that the campaign is getting “blowback” from foreign outlets. Foreign outlets have not been granted access to some Clinton events because the campaign wants to give preference to US publications.

Actually, that was just the first excuse for banning the reporter, David Martosko of the UK Daily Mail. When it was pointed out that reporters for foreign outlets, such as the left wing UK Guardian, have acted as pool reporters, the campaign dug up another, equally lame excuse: that Martosko is not personally accredited to the White House, although his colleague is. Sunce Hillary is not in the WH, this makes no sense, and is obviously a rationalization. The reala reason is obvious: Martsoko does his job to well, reporting inconvenient truths, like the vetting and bussing in of people for Hillary to “happen to” meet at stops in Iowa, or the speeding of her Scooby Van.

The Press pool reacted in unanimous outrage:

“We would like to see all campaign events open to the public and the full press corps, but when that is not possible we have agreed to pool coverage,” McClatchy’s Anita Kumar wrote on behalf of the cited organizations below. “We haven’t yet had a clear explanation about why the pool reporter for today’s events was denied access. But any attempt by the campaign to dictate who is in the pool is unacceptable. The pool is open to any print organization willing to take part.”

AFP

Boston Globe

BuzzFeed

Daily Mail

Financial Times

Guardian

McClatchy

New York Daily News

New York Times

Politico

Time

Tribune Publishing

Wall Street Journal

Washington Post

This is yet another bone-headed move by the Hillary campaign. Not only does it look bad and make rational people shudder at how she would behave if elected president, it also encourages the lapdog media to turn against her.