US Treasury Bars Select Journalists From G20 Meeting in North Carolina

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Treasury Department is barring some journalists from covering a high-profile finance gathering of the world’s leading economies, marking another flashpoint over media access under President Donald Trump’s administration.

Reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News were denied credentials for the Group of 20 finance ministers’ meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, according to a report from the Times.

Treasury officials have not publicly detailed why the credentials were withheld. In an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the decision “has nothing to do with point of view.”

Among those denied access is Alan Rappeport of the Times, who has covered the Treasury Department and similar international finance meetings since 2017. Another Times journalist, Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley, received approval to attend.

In a statement, the Times called the exclusion of American journalists from an event held in the United States “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, in a story published Sunday evening, said “numerous” journalists from the news agency, including some based in Europe and Asia, had their accreditation requests rejected. It said denying the agency access to the meeting “undermines media freedom and public accountability.”

The Wall Street Journal declined to comment.

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Bessent is hosting the G20 meeting, which runs Saturday through Tuesday. It includes finance ministers, central bank governors and senior officials from the world’s top economies. This year’s G20 summit, which involves heads of state, is being held in December at Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida.

Tensions have been escalating between the U.S. media and the second Trump administration, playing out both in the public arena and at times in the courts.

For example, the Defense Department declared earlier this year that its press office had become a classified space inaccessible to journalists. The ouster came after the Pentagon had demanded that reporters agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, prompting most news outlets to leave the building last fall.

The Associated Press has also sued Trump over access to the White House press pool. The news organization’s access was curtailed for sticking with the name “Gulf of Mexico” after the administration ordered it rechristened the “Gulf of America.”

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Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein in Asheville, N.C., contributed to this report.