Throughout our years in the news business and public relations we have never seen anyone succeed with the strategy of banning a reporter, or a news organization, from an event like a news conference.
Individual reporters may hate each other or harbor professional jealousies, but the one way to bring all reporters together is to treat one reporter unfairly. The Bob Stefanowski campaign learned that embarrassing lesson when they tried to ban reporter Kaitlyn Krasselt and photographer Peter Hvizdak from Hearst CT Media from one of their events during the closing days of the campaign.
Reporters in attendance quickly rose to their colleagues’ defense and the campaign reversed its ill-advised decision.
A similar scenario played out Wednesday at the White House when President Trump attacked CNN’s Jim Acosta and NBC’s Peter Alexander immediately rose to his competitor’s defense.
Of course with Trump, the lesson is not learned, because like a pig wrestling in the mud, at some point you realize the pig enjoys it.
