Denial of G20 press access highlights how bureaucrats control the news the public receives

The First Amendment explicitly prohibits the government from dictating who can — and can’t — be a journalist. But bureaucrats are leveraging a simple tool to gatekeep reporters and control the narratives that reach the public: the press badge. 

In the Trump administration’s latest attempt to influence media storylines, the Treasury Department has blocked certain journalists from covering the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in North Carolina. Specific reporters from three of the country’s largest newsrooms — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News — were forced to sit out the gathering.

The outlets have blasted the move as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to undermine press freedoms and punish journalists the president perceives as enemies. The move highlights how censorship can materialize when press credentialing processes effectively grant government officials the ability to decide who is, and is not, a member of the media. 

Media censorship sparks First Amendment concerns

The issue could once again open the Trump administration to First Amendment lawsuits, said Clay Calvert, a law professor at the University of Florida and a nonresident senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

“Once you create a forum for journalists, once the government does, you can’t discriminate against those journalists based upon their viewpoints,” Calvert told Straight Arrow. “That’s viewpoint-based discrimination.” 

Yet Trump isn’t the only politician who has faced scrutiny this year for granting press credentials to some — while denying access to others. Indeed, bureaucrats’ use of press credentialing to shape government narratives is bipartisan. In New York City, for example, press credential procedures have faced scrutiny for decades, particularly as they relate to bloggers and digital media startups.

In May, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office said it would review the city’s press credential approval process — not for who it denied, but for who it let through. 

The inquiry came after the city granted three supporters of Luigi Mangione press access to a court hearing for the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The ordeal generated controversy after the supporters, dubbed “The Mangionistas,” spoke glowingly of the man who has pleaded guilty to gunning down the health insurance executive in broad daylight. 

Records obtained by Straight Arrow through a public records request offer insights into a complicated and bureaucratic press credentialing process that’s been accused of being exclusionary and “elitist.” While reporters for some mainstream outlets like The New York Times were denied city press credentials this year, records show, those with hyperpartisan outlets like The Epoch Times were granted access. 

The names of the individual reporters who sought the credentials were redacted from the records, and the city’s justifications for rejecting specific applicants is unclear. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to emails from Straight Arrow seeking comment. 

The efforts come as government agencies increasingly seek to exploit press credentials that dictate which journalists get access to public leaders, according to a report published this year by Nicole Ligon, an assistant law professor at Campbell University in North Carolina. But the legal frameworks that define the credentialing process, Ligon wrote, are “underdeveloped, discretionary and structurally vulnerable to abuse.” 

While the government has an interest in “security and administrative control,” Ligon wrote, people have the right to pursue the profession of their choice. Revoking press access from a reporter can “interfere with a person’s ability to work,” and their “ability to access information on behalf of the public.” 

Trump limits press access for reporters he dislikes

As global finance leaders meet in North Carolina, economics reporters from two of the country’s most storied newspapers won’t be there to document the news. 

The move amounts to government censorship that limits the public’s understanding of major news events, a Times spokesperson told Straight Arrow. The Treasury Department’s decision to bar “highly qualified journalists” from covering the summit, the spokesperson said, represents “another disturbing effort by the administration to undermine independent journalism” and “a blatant attempt to evade public scrutiny.” 

“With the war in Iran, sanctions, the bond markets, and inflation on the agenda for the G-20 finance ministers, the stakes of this gathering are significant for the global economy and the American people,” Times spokesperson Nicole Taylor wrote in a statement. “Excluding specific reporters and entire news organizations is a disservice to the public and an infringement on press freedoms that we strongly condemn.”

The Treasury Department did not respond to emails from Straight Arrow seeking comment. 

A department spokesperson told The New York Times that it would grant press access to “nearly 300 members of the media from approximately a dozen countries.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told The Associated Press that the department’s decision to restrict press access to certain journalists “has nothing to do with point of view.”  

The denial of credentials is part of a broader pattern by the Trump administration to attack certain members of the press that the president perceives as political rivals. 

As Calvert of the University of Florida wrote last year, Trump has increasingly sought the role as “information gatekeeper.” Through efforts to control access to newsworthy events, Trump “seeks to ensure that narratives serving his agenda can flourish,” while those “who don’t amplify it are punished,” wrote Calvert, In some cases, Calvert wrote, Trump has denied journalists access in ways that are “pettily vindictive.” 

Earlier this year, for example, the Defense Department declared that its press office was a classified space and limited access by journalists. In October, journalists turned in their press badges and walked out of the Pentagon en masse rather than agree to a new Trump administration policy. Among the new rules is a requirement that they not report on anything without official government approval or risk losing their press badges. 

The New York Times filed a lawsuit accusing the rules of being “an unconstitutional attempt by the Pentagon to prevent independent reporting on military affairs.” 

“The only ones that were left and accepted those terms were people like Mike Lindell and Laura Loomer,” who both have close ties to the administration, Calvert told Straight Arrow. Calvert highlighted another time when Trump sought to punish journalists for their coverage: The administration blocked journalists from The Associated Press from White House events because the news service declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the name Trump gave it: the “Gulf of America.” 

It all comes down, he said, to a government effort to control what information reaches the public so that, ultimately, “the government then can try to control the narrative.” 

“Journalists really become the gatekeepers here in terms of information that can get out to the public,” he said. “By only allowing some journalists to play that role and keeping the others out so they’re not even there, that’s really what we’re seeing today.” 

Inside NYC’s press credential bureaucracy

As reporters lingered outside a Manhattan courthouse in May, a New York Daily News reporter captured footage from the press gaggle that reignited debates about who should — or should not — get media access.

“F— Brian Thompson,” said a woman in the film, donning a city-issued press pass around her neck, about the slain UnitedHealthcare executive. “I don’t give a flying f— he died.” 

The two other Mangione-supporting influencers with press badges piled on, with one stating that Thompson’s “children are better off without him,” and that they should “enjoy the blood money.” 

The ordeal led to questions about how the influencers got press badges in the first place. 

Managed by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, the city’s press credentialing rules require people to submit work samples of “6 or more articles, commentaries, books, photographs, videos, films or audios” published within the last two years before being granted a pass. The published work must be about news unfolding within the city, including “events sponsored by New York City that are open to members of the press” and “emergency, spot or breaking news events.”

The city also defines a “member of the press,” noting that a person with that designation can be “an employee of a newsgathering organization” or work as a freelance, “self-employed newsperson.” 

The city’s Press Credentials Office has reviewed more than 500 applications since Mamdani took office in January, according to the records obtained by Straight Arrow. Of those, 304 were ultimately approved while 144 were denied. Applicants’ names were redacted and the “company name” field was left blank for a majority of the applicants. 

Of those where the outlet’s name was included, credentials were ultimately granted to people from mainstream outlets like ABC 7 Chicago, WABC-TV, MS Now and The New York Post, as well as smaller and independent outlets like Streetsblog, Black Star News and The Center for Investigative Reporting. 

Also granted press credentials since January is the community organization Marcus Meets Malcum, a broadcaster with ties to the Falun Gong movement, and Indiana-based Catholic publishing company Our Sunday Visitor. 

Denied applicants from established outlets include those from journalists with New York Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, USA Today and ABC News. The Society of Unique Artists, a nonprofit “highlighting unique art,” fashion company DIFAD and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1896 were also denied credentials, according to the records. Denials span the partisan divide, including HuffPost on the left and Newsmax on the right. 

Calvert said that while “anybody can claim to be a journalist,” government agencies can limit the number of reporters with media credentials so long as the rules are viewpoint neutral. For high-profile court cases like the one involving the slain UnitedHealthcare CEO, he said, “there are going to be fewer seats than there are journalists who want to cover it.”

“So you’ve got to somehow ration those seats out, but the key thing is that if the government’s doing it, it should be in a viewpoint-neutral fashion, whether it’s a lottery system” or another mechanism, he said. 

The challenge, he said, is designing a credentialing process that won’t be weaponized to silence critics. 

“The danger is that you’re just going to skew it,” he said. “Who gets access will be the ones that are favorable to the government, whether it’s the local official or the Trump administration.”

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