pDonald Trump on Monday said his campaign would revoke the press credentials of The Washington Post, effectively prohibiting journalists from one of the nation’s largest newspapers from joining the traveling press corps of the presumptive Republican nominee./ppIn a Facebook post Monday, Trump accused The Post of “incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting” and deemed it “phony and dishonest,” although he has granted frequent interviews to the paper’s editors and reporters in the past./ppIt was not immediately clear if Trump’s announcement meant he would end all his communications with Post journalists. Trump has a propensity to attack the media, but he is also a keen cultivator of journalists, and he has been known to criticize reporters, then meet with them cordially shortly afterward./ppCombined with Trump’s promise to “open up” the nation’s libel laws, his punitive attitude toward the press has prompted concern among media and free-speech advocates. Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, issued a statement Monday calling Trump’s action “nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.”/pp“When coverage doesn’t correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished,” Baron wrote, referring to Trump’s practice. “The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along — honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically and unflinchingly.”/ppTrump’s pique stemmed from a Post headline Monday that suggested that the Republican candidate had linked President Barack Obama to the Orlando, Florida, shooting massacre. The article, published Monday, cited vague but insinuating comments made by Trump in a Fox News interview, in which he said Obama’s response to the shooting meant “he doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands.”/ppThe Trump campaign cited the Post headline in a statement, adding: “We no longer feel compelled to work with a publication which has put its need for ‘clicks’ above journalistic integrity.” The campaign added: “Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest.”/p
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