White House bans CNN reporter from press conference

[Benton]

(07-27-2018, 01:32 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Again, you're hung up on it only affecting one person. Our rights are individual, not collective. The press is made up of many members, not just agencies as  a whole, but each individual person who participates in spreading information.

Now, like I said, I don't know if they legally have to let them into the news conference, but the question should be "do they have to let anyone into a news conference?".

There's also the direct and indirect sharing of information among members. I don't think asking some Cohen questions would have done that, but who knows. I've been at press conferences where we've all got relatively the same info, then someone with information none of us had asks a question and there's a collective "oh, really?" moment. Sometimes it's more overt, where reporters familiar with each other will offer info to each other to see what the other guy is reporting on. 

Removing a reporter and the agency they represent can have a big impact just from the news gathering aspect.