When leaders from the world’s most powerful countries gather next week for the Group of 20 finance meeting in Asheville, N.C., they will be joined by throngs of journalists from newsrooms around the globe.
Missing from among them, though, will be several reporters from three of the largest newsrooms in the United States.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has not granted credentials to individual reporters for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News to cover the event, which will draw finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s biggest economies.
Alan Rappeport, an economic policy reporter who reports on the Treasury Department for The Times, has been excluded from the meeting. Since he began covering the department in 2017, he has attended nearly a dozen G7 and G20 meetings in person.
Matt Grossman, an economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was also denied a credential. A spokesman for The Journal declined to comment.
Nicole Taylor, a spokeswoman for The Times, said in a statement that the decision was “not just another disturbing effort by the administration to undermine independent journalism, but a blatant attempt to evade public scrutiny.”
“With the war in Iran, sanctions, the bond markets and inflation on the agenda for the G20 finance ministers, the stakes of this gathering are significant for the global economy and the American people,” the statement said.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department said in a statement that the department would be welcoming “nearly 300 members of the media from approximately a dozen countries,” including reporters from NPR, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera.
“Secretary Bessent will participate in numerous media engagements throughout the event, including one-on-one interviews with local and national outlets across the political spectrum,” the spokesman said. “Members of the media will have a high level of access to policymakers throughout the event, and with that access comes a responsibility to report factual information consistent with established journalistic standards.”
The Treasury spokesman added that a reporter from The Times would be in attendance. The department granted a credential to Jim Tankersley, the Times’s Berlin bureau chief who reports on Germany and other parts of Europe.
Dick Stevenson, The Times’s Washington bureau chief, sent a letter to the Treasury Department on Thursday asking officials there to reconsider the decision not to credential Mr. Rappeport, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. So far, they have not reversed their decision.
The decision to exclude individual reporters is the latest example of the Trump administration restricting access to certain journalists.
Last year, the Pentagon imposed a restrictive press policy that prompted dozens of journalists from mainstream publications to surrender their press badges in protest. The Times sued the Pentagon, arguing that the new policy violated the First Amendment, and a judge later ruled that it the was unconstitutional.
The post Treasury Bars Some Reporters From G20 Finance Meeting appeared first on New York Times.
