Keeping the door to that smoke filled room closed up tight

Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said in a email that she found the agreement “outrageous — on the part of the media organizations, that is. The organizers can ask for whatever they want and think they can get. I don’t like it, but it is up to the news organizations to draw the line and to refuse to attend under these circumstances.”

As “the restrictions could stop journalists from reporting what’s right before their eyes,” she added, they reflect “a profound contempt for the role of an independent press, and by extension, the public.”

“The idea that reporting something like a donor’s attendance would be forbidden unless the donor agrees sounds like the European right to privacy on steroids,” Kirtley quipped. “When I think back to how hard the news media fought to avoid restrictions on combat reporting, I really despair. At least in the case of combat reporting, there was a plausible argument that national security was at stake. What’s at stake here is press independence.”

Huffington Post Senior Media Reporter Michael Calderone noted in a Sunday column that restrictions like these could prevent an important part of the story coming out: “The problem is that the ground rules could restrict journalists from reporting what’s right in front of their eyes. If, say, Rupert Murdoch, or even a lesser-known billionaire, walked by, they couldn’t report the person’s attendance without permission. So it’s possible journalists end up reporting largely what the event sponsors want, such as fiery speeches and candidate remarks criticizing Democrats, but less on the power brokers attending who play key behind-the-scenes roles in the 2016 election.”

Other media ethics experts were even more critical of the attendees for agreeing to such strict conditions. Robert Drechsel, a professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email, “Given how serious an issue secrecy and anonymity have become in the context of the flow of dollars to influence election outcomes, I find it especially remarkable that any media organizations would agree to in effect become complicit in facilitating such secrecy and anonymity.”

Dreschel added that, while it was understandable why journalists would want to attend, the agreement to follow these rules sets a bad precedent. “When the Kochs are attempting to give themselves more of a positive public face, why would the media be willing to assist in such image-building by agreeing to conditions on access?” he asked.