New York Times reporter Amy Chozick is one of a plethora of reporters assigned to the Hillary beat far in advance of any presidential campaign announcement. So it’s obvious she would be ensconced at the Clinton Global Initiative meetings. But even sympathetic reporters like to roam and question people.
Chozick complained on the Times website on Wednesday that the Clintons tasked press aides to accompany reporters to the restroom:
But, for me, perhaps the person who stands out is the friendly 20-something press aide who the Clinton Global Initiative tasked with escorting me to the restroom. She waited outside the stall in the ladies’ room at the Sheraton Hotel, where the conference is held each year.
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. 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.
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. 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.
What a jerk. Hillary's press aides can be jerks, and perhaps are expected to be jerks, because the liberal media generally accept it. It doesn't hurt the tone of her coverage.
Chozick was unhappy enough to complain about uneven treatment: "several dozen reporters lined up to pass through metal detectors when several people jumped the queue. “They’re with Katie Couric!” a press aide explained when a journalist (O.K., me) complained. (Ms. Couric, they later explained, would be moderating a panel later that morning with Chelsea Clinton.)"
Chozick says in the past, the Clinton confab has always had metal detectors and heightened security with all the VIPs in attendance, but the 2016 anxieties are kicking in: "reporters could roam relatively freely until last year, when interest in and scrutiny of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation spiked amid speculation that Mrs. Clinton would run for president in 2016.
