The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says the Harris campaign has blocked it from all future events, owing to a labor dispute at the paper that dates to 2022 and that now only involves one-quarter of the outlet’s unionized workforce.

“If political campaigns, not to mention sitting vice presidents, can exclude the press at their discretion, then no one’s freedom to cover government and politics is safe,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial page editor Brandon McGinley wrote Saturday.

The Harris campaign has been blocking the paper since at least Aug. 6, when it was barred from covering an event in Philadelphia.

McGinley wrote that he hesitated about raising the issue publicly, but decided it was riskier not to, warning, “If you can’t imagine ever landing on the wrong side of power, or on the wrong side of respectable opinion, I’d suggest imagining a little harder.”

It is not the only report of press exclusion from Harris. The New Hampshire Journal claimed Wednesday that it was barred from attending a Harris event held in that state.

Jeffrey McCall, a DePauw University professor of political and media communication, said it’s an accepted practice for politicians to choose which outlets to grant one-on-one interviews but not which ones are allowed to simply attend an event.

“It is never a good idea for government officials or politicians to ban media outlets from covering public events,” he said. “That is why it is such an unheard-of practice, rarely implemented. The optics of banning media outlets always come off as looking quite undemocratic and, frankly, rather evasive.”

The practice diminishes the notion of free flow of information in a democracy, he says.

“Further, when politicians refuse to allow all media outlets to cover public events, they are basically saying they don’t care about informing the citizens and voters who might get their news from those outlets,” McCall added. “That’s a rather cynical view of the electorate in a nation with a free press.”

Michael Graham, managing editor of the New Hampshire Journal, says Granite State Democratic candidates have long barred his outlet, which is viewed as center-right, from covering events and that the issue does not appear to be Harris specific. Still, he says it is part of a growing and disturbing trend of viewpoint bias. (Full disclosure: Graham was an employee of the Washington Examiner from 2015 to 2017.)

“At the state level, there is more and more exclusion by Democrats of local press,” Graham said. “Democrats running for governor, running for Congress, if it’s a race where the coverage is all inside the state, they are saying, ‘We don’t need you people.’”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is not generally considered a conservative news outlet, though it did endorse former President Donald Trump in 2020, its first time backing a Republican presidential candidate since 1972. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is the second-largest news organization in Pennsylvania and the largest newspaper in Pittsburgh.

A long and convoluted strike has been ongoing at the paper since October 2022, when a Teamsters unit went on the picket line over the suspension of a legacy healthcare plan. Other staff followed, and the journalist strike began as a way to show solidarity with the other units. But the initial vote to go on strike was narrow, and today only about 25% of the original union is still striking.

The Harris camp appears to be excluding the paper at the behest of the union, according to McGinley’s column.

The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh is headed by Zach Tanner, whose X profile says that he is “on strike against the scab Post-Gazette.” Tanner has a history of making controversial posts on the social media site.

When Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) posted in July about state funding for more police officers, Tanner wrote, “Joshy (derogatory) using this moment to justify more pigs. F*** off, Shapiro.” In August, he reacted to news of a man running over a Pittsburgh police officer by joking, “Can he be our senator instead of [John] Fetterman?”

Harris has cultivated a relatively icy relationship with the press since becoming the Democratic nominee on July 21. She has conducted only a single interview, which was done along with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).

Harris has not conducted any press conferences and only occasionally taken questions from traveling reporters. There have been intermittent reports of campaign staffers preventing reporters from speaking to voters outside of designated press pens, and the campaign often refuses to answer questions on her policy positions.

Conservatives hold that her treatment of the media should be a factor in the election.

“Kamala Harris’s cynical decision to hide from the press and the voters, and even to block reporters covering her public events from speaking with voters in attendance, shows us her contempt for us,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, said. “Voters will remember that on Election Day.”

It is unclear if the Harris campaign has excluded any other news outlets from its events or if it employs a set of written standards for deciding which reporters are allowed inside.

The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Harris campaign and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh seeking comment.