(Bloomberg) — The US Treasury Department excluded journalists from several media outlets, including Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal, from coverage of this week’s Group of 20 finance ministers summit in Asheville, North Carolina, amid global market volatility and the US-Iran conflict.
The department offered no explanation to Bloomberg for its decision to reject numerous accreditation requests for the summit of economic policy leaders and central bank governors.
The US holds the 2026 G20 presidency, and the Treasury controls access to this year’s meeting, which runs from Sunday to Tuesday. The department said earlier that it expects to host more than 200 journalists from dozens of countries.
Markets are monitoring information coming from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent closely after he intervened to support the yen and the bond market, making him one of the most activist Treasury secretaries in history.
Long-dated US bond yields have hit multiyear highs in August, in part driven by renewed inflation concerns and the rising US national debt, which hit more than $40 trillion this month. Bessent has also come under scrutiny for his handling of an economic pressure campaign designed to force Iran into negotiations to end the war started by President Donald Trump.
The Treasury Department also denied credentials to a US-based New York Times reporter, the paper reported. The German Finance Ministry successfully lobbied Treasury to accredit a Times reporter accompanying Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, according to ministry officials familiar with the matter.
A separate push by German officials at a high diplomatic level to secure an accreditation for a Bloomberg reporter traveling with Klingbeil was not successful, the officials added. Other Bloomberg reporters based in the US, France, Italy, Japan and China were also denied access.
“Denying access to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting — a forum that undoubtedly serves the global public interest — undermines media freedom and public accountability,” a spokesperson for Bloomberg News said. “We will continue to advocate for full press access while reporting fairly and accurately on proceedings.”
No Precedent
The exclusion of multiple major news outlets from an international event like this has little precedent among countries that have previously hosted G20 meetings — including Russia and China — and is unprecedented for the US government.
The New York Times quoted a spokeswoman for the paper, Nicole Taylor, saying that the decision was “not just another disturbing effort by the administration to undermine independent journalism, but a blatant attempt to evade public scrutiny.” The Wall Street Journal didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
One possible analogue is the attempt by the Obama administration in 2009 to exclude Fox News from an interview with Kenneth Feinberg, then serving as the Treasury Department’s “pay czar.” But the White House, which was organizing the interview, relented after other networks threatened to boycott.
The Trump administration has moved more broadly to limit press access to events that are in the public interest since the president took office for his second term last year, including changes in the group of reporters able to cover presidential events. The Defense Department has also barred media organizations from keeping offices in the Pentagon.
The Federal Reserve said Chairman Kevin Warsh, who along with Bessent is co-hosting this year’s finance ministers meeting, would also attend and may deliver brief remarks at the start of some sessions. The Fed declined to comment.
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