The US Treasury Department has denied accreditation to several journalists seeking to cover a G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, marking the latest dispute between President Donald Trump’s administration and the media.
Individual reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News were denied credentials for the meeting.
The Treasury Department has not provided an explanation for the decision. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, however, told the AP in an interview on Sunday that “it has nothing to do with point of view”.
Among those denied access is New York Times reporter Alan Rappeport, who has covered the Treasury Department and such international finance meetings since 2017. Another Times journalist, Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley, has been granted access to the gathering.
The New York Times said in a statement that barring American journalists from an event held in the US 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 Times said.
“Excluding specific reporters and entire news organizations is a disservice to the public and an assault on press freedoms that we strongly condemn.”
Bloomberg News reported on Sunday evening that “numerous” journalists from the agency, including reporters based in Europe and Asia, had their accreditation requests rejected. The agency said the decision to deny it access to the meeting “undermines media freedom and public accountability.”
The Wall Street Journal declined to comment.
Bessent is hosting the G20 meeting, which began on Saturday and runs through Tuesday. The gathering brings together finance ministers, central bank governors and senior officials from the world’s leading economies.
The G20 summit, which is attended by heads of state and government, is scheduled for December at Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida.
The latest accreditation dispute comes amid growing tensions between the US media and Trump’s second administration, with disagreements playing out publicly and, in some cases, in court.
Earlier this year, the Defense Department declared its press office a classified space that journalists could no longer access. The move followed the Pentagon’s demand that reporters accept government-imposed restrictions on their work, prompting most major news organisations to leave the building last autumn.
The AP has also sued the Trump administration over access to the White House press pool. The news agency’s access was restricted after it continued using the name “Gulf of Mexico” despite the administration’s order to rename it the “Gulf of America.”
