FIRST AMENDMENT? WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT?
Scott Pruitt’s Security Guards Just Forcibly Removed a Reporter from an EPA Hearing

A reporter with the Associated Press was just physically and forcibly removed from an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on contaminants. She was also refused when she asked to speak an EPA public-affairs spokesperson.
EPA “security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building,” the AP reports.
Not only was the reporter physically removed, the EPA banned all reporters from several news organizations from attending the summit. In addition to reporters from the Associated Press, reporters from CNN and E&E, a news organization for energy and environment professionals, were also banned.
One E&E reporter tweeted:
This morning’s PFAS Leadership Summit at @EPA headquarters is open to the press… just not to reporters from @EENewsUpdates, @AP or @CNN. We’ve all asked the agency’s press office why we’re being selectively shut out and have gotten no responses.
— Corbin Hiar (@CorbinHiar) May 22, 2018
“EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred.”
The summit was convened by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
Apparently, the “no space” claim was not accurate.
Spokesman Jahan Wilcox at @EPA says it was a capacity issue but reporters in the room say there were empty seats https://t.co/FZbdV671k1
— Rene Marsh (@Rene_MarshCNN) May 22, 2018
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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