News organizations that were blacklisted by Donald Trump are now being un-blacklisted, the Trump campaign told CNN Wednesday. Those organizations include BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post and Politico.
The news was greeted Wednesday with approval from editors at several news organizations that were relegated to Trump’s blacklist.
“As we’ve said, we’re proud of our coverage of Donald Trump, and we won’t change our coverage or the way we approach it, regardless of the access we do or don’t have,” said Katherine Miller, the political editor at BuzzFeed News. “We are pleased the blacklist is over.”
In a statement, The Washington Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron was also happy to see the end of it.
“Revoking press credentials was imprudent, pointless, and offensive from the start,” he said. “We’re pleased to see the ban come to a long-overdue end.”
Susan Glasser, the editor of Politico, added her approval.
“Access to a major party’s presidential campaign events shouldn’t be a favor to be granted or withheld to the independent media depending on how the candidate views the coverage, and we are glad the Trump campaign has decided to take this step.”
While they may be glad it’s over, and while the blacklist was certainly a troubling sign for press freedoms, it didn’t stop those news organizations from covering the Republican presidential candidate. BuzzFeed, Politico and The Washington Post each continued reporting from the campaign trail — and their offices — regardless of whether they were allowed to stand in the press pen at Trump’s rallies.
The Washington Post has continued covering Trump and published a book about the candidate as well as a book of essays from the Post’s Monkey Cage blog.
BuzzFeed’s KFile, the political research unit led by Andrew Kaczynski, uncovered evidence that Trump initially supported the Iraq War, despite his current insistence that he always opposed it. KFile also dug into court filings to discover anti-semitic remarks made by Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon and raised questions about $800,000 raised by a pro-Trump political committee.
Similarly, Politico offered scrutiny regarding Trump’s stagnating polling numbers, indecision within his campaign and the unflattering employment history of his campaign chief. It’s a track record that Glasser noted in her statement.
“Our reporters are looking forward to doing their job covering the Trump campaign,” she said, “as they’ve been doing all year.”
