Today in Both Sides Are The Same, the White House Correspondents' Association, the body that oversees the White House press corps, has expressed concern about the way the Trump and Clinton campaigns treat reporters.
If you've been paying any attention at all, you should know how fucking ridiculous this is.
The public’s right to know is infringed if certain reporters are banned from a candidate's events because the candidate doesn’t like a story they have written or broadcast, as Donald Trump has done.
Similarly, refusing to regularly answer questions from reporters in a press conference, as Hillary Clinton has, deprives the American people of hearing from their potential commander-in-chief in a format that is critical to ensuring he or she is accountable for policy positions and official acts.
On one hand, the Trump campaign has banned individual reporters and entire publications from his events. Trump's staff has physically assaulted several reporters. Trump himself has threatened retaliation against the parent companies of publications that run negative stories about him. Billionaire tech bro Peter Thiel, the man who has forced Gawker Media into bankruptcy through a series of lawsuits directly challenging the freedom of the press, will speak on behalf of Donald Trump at the GOP convention.
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton does not hold enough press conferences.
To equate these campaigns in this way is not just ludicrous, it's irresponsible. This necessarily minimizes the way Trump has treated the media and if you're a reporter who's been assaulted at or banned from Trump events this must be very insulting.
As far as the correspondents association is concerned, the treatment of reporters who've been assaulted or banned is no worse than the treatment of their overpaid stenographers who haven't had a chance to ask Hillary Clinton yet another stupid question about the fucking email server, or Pokemon Go, or the unfortunate death of a goddamn zoo animal.
The very first reporter to be thrown out of a Trump campaign event was Jorge Ramos. Ramos was ejected and told to 'go back to his country' because he questioned Donald Trump's categorization of immigrants as criminals and rapists.