Ocasio-Cortez bans press from town hall.

[lapucelle]

87. It's a local news story that was broken by a small Queens newspaper that supported AOC

throughout her run. She was unavailable to the local press for 7 weeks due to a cross country fundraising and publicity tour. Now she's barring the local press from her public events.

From today's editorial page of the Queens Chronicle

We can’t recall the last time a candidate for office held a town hall-style campaign event and barred the press from attending. And while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s team gave some decent reasons why she did so last Sunday in Corona, we still think it was a bad choice and hope she doesn’t make it a habit.

The Democratic nominee for Congress in the 14th District — and virtually guaranteed winner because she has no real opponent — Ocasio-Cortez held the event as part of a “listening tour” around the district she will represent. At a prior event in the Bronx, she was “mobbed” by reporters even though her campaign had told the media there would be no question-and-answer period and no one-on-one interviews, her team said. Hence the barring of the press from both another event in the Bronx and the one here. Also, they wanted residents to be able to speak their minds without the distraction of reporters and cameras. But, they said, these were the first of AOC’s events the press was barred from, and that will not become the norm.

We’re going to hold her to that. Ocasio-Cortez has been granting interviews to major media outlets nationwide since becoming a progressive Democratic star, and she should not forget the Queens press once elected — especially the paper that gave her run more and better coverage than any other here when she was seen as the underdog.