WASHINGTON — The Hillary Clinton campaign routinely finds ways to avoid the rotating group of reporters, known as a press pool, that covers her day-to-day activities.
When the president, vice president or presidential candidates participate in day to day public activities at locations that are too small to hold an entire press corp., a press pool representing different genres of the media, including print, radio, and TV, is formed, so one reporter for each genre must produce a report of the event for the plethora of correspondents in their respective media industry.
A rotation of correspondents participate in “pool duty” to share the expense, time and travel covering the candidate, which can become costly.
The Clinton travel pool, which The Daily Caller was a part of for almost a year until mid May 2016, often weaves itself through obstacles the Clinton campaign throws in its way which includes notifying the pool less than 24 hours in advance of a pooled event and cancelling a pooled situation at an open press campaign event after reporters arrive.
“At a certain point we really started pushing for at least a solid month or two before the [Democratic] convention before the nomination for a protected pool. In some ways they held up their end of the bargain and in some ways they didn’t,” McClatchy’s Anita Kumar a former pool chair told The Daily Caller. “But the media changed how we worked even if they didn’t fully change how they worked.”
During the Democratic National Convention the pool began having a pooler a day follow Clinton around to events, but the campaign still limits pooler access. There are 17 media organizations in the print pool, for example, so an outlet’s turn to cover Clinton happens every 17 days.
“It doesn’t matter what she does even if she is down and she doesn’t have any public events or pooled events, even if she’s fundraising and they won’t let us in,” Kumar said.
The Clinton campaign’s reluctance to allow a true protective pool around the candidate added to the notion that she wants to keep the press at a distance from her.
The campaign’s handling of quietly shuffling Clinton away during the 9/11 memorial service Sunday and not notifying the reporter pool ended up backfiring on her when a civilian’s video caught Clinton falling over from illness as she was helped into her vehicle.
“The problem is they are not treating it as a protective pool. They are in some regards. Now we are on the plane with her, which is great, but if it were a protective pool they would have pulled the pool with her [Sunday]. That would never happen with the president. That’s just not how it works. That wasn’t a protective pool,” Kumar pointed out.
A protective pool is used daily at the White House to shadow the president. For example, the pool is always on standby to follow the president each day, until notice is sent to pool outlets that the president will not attend any further public events or outings and is calling it a night. The White House’s pool is composed of outlets that follow the president both within the beltway and outside the beltway.
However, the Clinton campaign, despite calling the travel pool a protected pool, still limits reporters access and does not allow door to door pool coverage, so the group of correspondents cannot meet with her in the morning at her home and travel with her from her residence.
During the primary, the pool often found itself scrambling to deploy a local reporter outside of the pool to cover Clinton when reporters could not cover the former secretary of state on a designated day, which prompted pool chairs to push for a protected pool.
Differing interpretations of a protected pool between the campaign and the media is not the only point of contention. Pool reporters covering Clinton have become frustrated after arriving at campaign events only to find the venue is large enough to hold the entire traveling press or is already filled with local and state press, thus defeating the purpose of a small pool of reporters from the outside.
Access to a scheduled pooled event itself can be tricky. In the past, The Daily Caller, among other pool reporters could barely get access to a meeting Clinton had set up with an undocumented Latino family during the National Immigrant Integration Conference held back in December.
“Your pooler was scheduled to report on a meeting HRC had with the Suarez family prior her speech. However, your pooler and other reporters were not allowed into the meeting and were left waiting for almost an hour until HRC’s photo spray with the Suarez family,” TheDC wrote in the pool report. “This spray lasted about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Clinton sat with the family in a sofa/seat set up. The matriarch of the family, Osman Suarez spoke in Spanish about coming to the United States.”
In June 2015, the Clinton campaign denied access one day to the designated print pool reporter, The Daily Mail’s David Martosko. The campaign contended that a foreign outlet could not be allowed into the pool, but Martosko argued the Guardian is a pool member as well.
Hearing what Clinton says to people on the campaign trail can be difficult as well. Pool reporters are placed so far away from Clinton at times that understanding what she says can be nearly impossible.
And what about those seldom Clinton press conferences on the campaign trail? Clinton Communications Director Nick Merrill will either call on reporters or Clinton likely calls on reporters familiar to her.
TheDC witnessed one correspondent blow up on Merrill in New Hampshire during the primary, because he cut a press conference short before the reporter could get his question answered.
Ultimately, reporters can sometimes get less access than the general public who go to campaign events for both Clinton and Donald Trump. The video of an ill and wobbly Clinton getting into her car Sunday was amateur footage.
Even at open press events where music is blasting, both campaigns keep reporters away from the candidates following remarks by deploying Secret Service around them and citing security reasons.
However, throngs of campaign event attendees who were never background checked can swarm the candidate, ask questions, take selfies and get autographs.
This strategy, though, fell flat during the primary for Clinton when an anti-fracking activist who went to a campaign event last January in Hamptson, New Hampshire and found her way up to Clinton.
The activist managed to ask Clinton to support a fracking ban pledge on phone video, as the Democratic candidate worked the crowd after her speech.
