Photographer Banned from National Press Club Press Conference

Scott Suchman, an accomplished photographer hired by the Intelligence Report to photograph a press conference put on Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by the hate group The Social Contract Press, was thrown out of the event by its organizers. The Press Club is considered the “sanctum sanctorum of American journalists” and is dedicated to “the promotion of free expression.”

When Suchman arrived at the Club’s Lisagor Room with camera in hand, he was questioned about who he was free-lancing for. He was told by Diana Hull, head of the press conference’s co-sponsor Californians for Population Stabilization, that because he was shooting photographs for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes the Report, he could not attend.

Club House Manager David King told Hatewatch that the Club doesn’t censor or discriminate against those who rent their facilities. “Those crazy folks have the full right to say that they don’t want a [particular] photographer in their event,” he explained. The press conference’s organizer, Fran Griffin of Griffin Communications, held another event that featured speeches by several hate group members at the Club in March. One speech, by “radical traditionalist Catholic” E. Michael Jones, consisted of an anti-Semitic rant about the evil “revolutionary Jew,” which was so rabid it caused C-SPAN to cancel its planned coverage of the event.