You’re the politics reporter for a local newspaper and you find out the press conference you’re supposed to cover isn’t at City Hall. It’s in a remote rural community, where the politician has assembled a crowd of cheering fans and media outlets of his choosing. Your organization doesn’t have the resources to get you there and he knows this: He’s dodging your newspaper, and he’s dodging accountability.
This is just one of many tactics used by newsmakers to block the press. A new report called “Shut Out: Strategies for good journalism when sources dismiss the press,” authored by Fernanda Camarena, a longtime journalist and Poynter Institute faculty member, and Mel Grau, Poynter’s director of program management, collects anecdotes from reporters who are up against an increasingly evasive posture toward the media such as physically barring reporters from legislative chambers, stalling on or denying public records requests, and literally running away from reporters.
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