WND watchdog forces Senate press reforms
Feb. 11, 2003: A bitter 19-month fight by WND with the Senate Press Gallery for press credentials not only ended with the committee that runs the galleries in Congress backing down – the committee decided it was time to review the longstanding rules used to vet applicants for press credentials.
"I think the obvious trigger was the litigation of the WorldNetDaily application, which forced the committee to take a look at the rules," said Bloomberg News congressional correspondent William L. Roberts III, the outgoing chairman of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which gets its authority from Congress.
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WND's legal team charged that the Standing Committee of Correspondents had violated the news site's First Amendment rights by unfairly excluding it from covering Congress.
A document used internally by the committee to investigate WND later revealed that it was more concerned with the political nature of WND's content than its quantity. WND counsel Richard Ackerman of the U.S. Justice Foundation, who uncovered the document, charged the panel was engaging in "viewpoint-based discrimination."
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The panel overturned its ruling against WND after legal action was threatened.
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