The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, is getting push back from the local news media after she banned a reporter from WYPR 88.1 FM from her weekly news conference at city hall, because she didn’t like his questions.
This is always a bad idea, because such a fight can never be contained to one offending or even offensive reporter. Inevitably, the news media at large comes to the defense of the banned reporter and the politician has to end the ban.
In the Rawlings-Blake case for instance, obscure media blogs from as far away as Connecticut, might take up the banned reporter’s cause.
It is entertaining however and this case reminds us of the heady days when former Congressman Chris Shays tried to ban a writer from the blog “My Left Nutmeg” from one of his district news conferences, just because Shays could not comprehend – in those early blogosphere days – how a publication named “My Left Nutmeg” could be considered a legitimate news gathering entity.
