Clinton camp shuts out ‘Daily Mail’ reporter

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is not allowing a Daily Mail reporter access to campaign events, despite being chosen by media outlets to provide pooled coverage of Monday’s trip around New Hampshire.

Nick Merrill, a senior Clinton campaign press aide, said David Martosko, the U.S. political editor for the Daily Mail, was shut out because of “blowback from foreign outlets that want to be a part of the pool.”

“We need to rethink it all, maybe for a day, and just cool things off until we can have a discussion,” Merrill told Martosko.

{mosads}When Martosko pointed out that non-American news organizations like The Guardian are part of the pool, Merrill said those outlets were a part of the official White House press pool, so the campaign treated those outlets differently.

Martosko said on Twitter that he still plans to drive to Clinton’s event in Rochester, N.H.

“We can confirm that David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor, DailyMail.com was today denied access to Hillary Clinton’s campaign event and was prohibited from boarding a van that the Clinton campaign is using to transport pool reporters around New Hampshire,” a Daily Mail representative told The Hill.

News outlets covering Clinton set up the pool independently, so participating outlets would not have to always have someone traveling with the campaign. One representative chosen from the rotation each day travels closely with the campaign and provides all pool members with notes from her events.

But only outlets that have pledged to help with the travel pool receive immediate updates; other media outlets do not receive an aggregate list of all the reports until the end of Clinton’s trip. That includes foreign outlets that can’t send reporters stateside. 

“We want a happy press corps as much as the press corps does. And we work very hard to achieve that in tandem with them,” Merrill said.

“It’s a long campaign, and we are going to do our best to find equilibrium and best accommodate interest from as many news outlets as possible, given the space limitations of our events.”