NYT Reporter: GOP on Their ‘High Horse’ About Hillary’s Media Silence

Hillary Clinton hasn’t answered a real question from the media in almost a month. Naturally, professional political journalists, like the ones at the NY Times, are lashing out… at Republicans:

All the Rs mounting a high horse now about press access & Hillary will side w the press when an R candidate starts dodging press, right?

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) May 18, 2015

Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent for the NY Times so he must be keeping up with what is going on. According to NPR, Hillary has only answered 13 questions from the media in the 36 days since she announced her run for President. And several of those questions were softballs such as “How are you liking Iowa?”

And that was all before Hillary gave up answering questions at all more than three weeks ago. The Washington Post set up a clock to measure the time since the last question and it is now approaching 40,000 minutes. All of this to say, Hillary’s dodging of the media is a legitimate story.

Meanwhile there are half a dozen Republican candidates, all of whom seem pretty eager to talk to reporters. They are conspicuously running toward the microphones Hillary is desperate to avoid. So there is really no reason to drag Republicans into the story Hillary’s campaign is writing about a candidate dodging the media. This is a story created by the candidate herself, not by her opponents.

Jonathan Martin justifies Hillary’s silence based on something that hasn’t happened and, in all likelihood, probably never will happen. Will we see a GOP candidate comfortably in the lead with enough money to let his or her surrogates do the talking while he or she dodges the press? And it seems even less likely that, if this did happen, reporters would pass off a Republican’s silence as a product of Democrats on their high horses. Don’t hold your breath for that one.

When leading reporters at the NY Times are offering excuses for Hillary dodging the media (after a month of silence), it’s no wonder her political team thinks there is no downside to doing so.