Boston Herald
The Herald says White House press office has refused to give it full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today. WH spokesman Matt Lehrich told the Herald that pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly,” and complained about the paper’s a March 8 piece by Mitt Romney. “My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich said in an email. The Herald’s Hillary Chabot writes:
Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.
Longtime Boston press critic Dan Kennedy says the WH spokesman’s mistake was in putting his beef with the Herald in writing.
Clearly Lehrich has never heard of the great Martin Lomasney (“The Mahatma,” as he was called) and his first rule of politics: “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”
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