Clinton advance aides create a rope line for the press, moving with the candidate pic.twitter.com/9S7CpVt7x4
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 4, 2015
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was campaigning in New Hampshire today for the Presidency and the press corps were in tow. However, the campaign kept the press within a roped corral. The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman took a photo of CNN producer Dan Merica pushing against the rope with his video camera and posted it to Twitter. The tweet and picture went viral with over seven hundred retweets. The move was criticized by those in the press. PBS NewsHour co-anchor and anchor of Washington Week Gwen Ifill tweeted,
Did it occur to no one that this would surely be photographed?? https://t.co/V7FQYhqnyh
— gwen ifill (@gwenifill) July 4, 2015
The press and Hillary Clinton have never had a particularly warm relationship. She has typically seen them as enablers of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” and has cut back on access accordingly. As one of the most well-known women in America, and the most well-known 2016 candidates, she has not needed to rely on the press to convey her proposals or raise her name recognition. During the 2008 election, the Clinton campaign saw the press as in the tank for then-Senator Barack Obama, further frying relations.
CBS Radio’s White House Correspondent, Mark Knoller, tweeted that the rope tactic was used during the Clinton Administration as well with the press corps.
Flashback: Bill
Clinton Corralled the Press With Ropes in 1992
http://americanglob.com/2015/07/08/flashback-bill-clinton-corralled-the-press-with-ropes-in-1992/