On Wednesday, both The Conservative New Mexican and the Piñon Post were denied entry into Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s media briefing regarding her support for abortion in the State of New Mexico.
Left-wing media went head-over-heels when a far-left reporter, Shawn Griswold, for the foreign-owned “Source New Mexico” was not admitted entry into Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Ronchetti’s private campaign rally with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) earlier this month.
According to the campaign, “Source New Mexico was denied a credential because they are ‘a left-wing advocacy group, not a legitimate news organization.’” The online newspaper’s liberal founding, dark-money funding, and one-sided “reporting” indicate this to be true.
Regarding Griswold not being allowed into the campaign event, leftist media collectively lost it over “freedom of the press.”
The Las Vegas Optic wrote in a melodramatic editorial, “It’s a gross overstep of authority, and one everyone should be concerned about,” adding, “We don’t know about everyone reading this, but that sure doesn’t sound like freedom of the press to us.”
The Santa Fe Reporter chimed in, claiming Griswold’s denied entry was “an obvious affront to press freedom.”
New Mexico Foundation for Open Government (NMFOG) whined that booting Griswold was “a dangerous precedent to let any public servant decide who is and is not a ‘legitimate’ reporter.”
To test this theory of supposed “press freedom,” both the Piñon Post, a news site initially founded in 2018, and The Conservative New Mexican, founded in 2021, requested press credentials for Lujan Grisham’s Wednesday press briefing.
The event was scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday. As of this writing, the governor’s press secretary has yet to respond to either of our requests for access.
We will see if these supposed beacons of journalistic prowess will be crowing from the top of their lungs about “open government” and “press freedom” now that two conservative-leaning outlets were denied access—to a PUBLIC event, no less.
At the presser, Lujan Grisham announced that in the 2023 Legislative Session, if re-elected, she will designate $10 million of public capital outlay money to build a new abortion facility in Doña Ana County, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, which was granted access to the briefing.
Even more damning, every single correspondence sent from the Piñon Post requesting comment on a story or access to an official press conference has gone unanswered, both by press secretary Nora Sackett and former communications director Tripp Stelnicki.
The shameless hypocrisy of these leftist “news” outlets like the Reporter and Optic and “open government” groups like NMFOG prove that the crowing over “press freedom” is all a political ploy meant to dredge up more controversy and take jabs at Conservative voices.
We will patiently wait for these leftist editorial boards and “transparency” groups to denounce Lujan Grisham for her administration’s “affronts on the freedom of the press.”
John Block is the founder and editor of the Piñon Post. Nick Wilbur runs The Conservative New Mexican.
Don’t miss these related articles:
Leftists Demand Answers But Ask No Questions Over Fake News Ban
Woke op-ed: NM’s ‘free’ college holding state ‘hostage’ because oil & gas funds it
OutSource New Mexico: Dark Money Funds ‘Left-of-Center’ SourceNM to ‘Change the Political Debate’
Categories: 2022 Governor's Race
The Conservative New Mexican 
Well of course! As if those media really had any effect. The obvious hypocrisy and tit-for-tat is standard fare. Sad for our state.
LikeLike