The Mirror

Clinton Aide Watches Stall As Reporter Relieves Herself

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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Talk about shitty.

Amy Chozick, the NYT reporter tasked with covering Hillary Clinton, already knows full well how rough it’s going to get for the press covering Clinton’s probable presidential campaign this time around. After covering the Clinton Global Initiative, she wrote of a 20-something aide trailing her to the restroom. The aide walked her to the potty and waited outside the stall for Chozick, apparently confused for a toddler, to finish.

“Security, foundation aides told me, dictates that the hordes of journalists, many of them from overseas news outlets, be cloistered in a basement at the Sheraton,” Chozick wrote Wednesday. “An elaborate maze of security barricades separates where reporters enter and roam (though not freely) from the lobby of the hotel, where actual guests enter.”

When the reporter asked why scribes like her have to be subjected to this demoralizing guarding, suffice it to say she was not given a clear answer.

“An escort is required wherever we go, lest one of us with our yellow press badges wind up somewhere where attendants with an esteemed blue badge are milling around,” she wrote. “When asked about the practice, Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the initiative, directed me to a press release about American Standard’s Flush for Good campaign to improve sanitation for three million people in the developing world. ‘Since you are so interested in bathrooms and C.G.I,’ Mr. Minassian said.”

Huh?

Chozick explained that this tightening of the press corps is relatively new. Until last year, for instance, reporters could “roam freely,” as in tinkle without an escort.