Key members of the press complained Friday that news outlets other than their own had readouts of the House Republican memo outlining the abuse of the government's surveillance authorities, before it was formally released by the House Intelligence Committee.
According to Politico, a Fox News reporter outlined some of the details of the memo at 11:45 a.m., and then three minutes later, the Washington Examiner's Byron York had a story up describing it.
The memo was published by the committee at about 12:16 p.m. That time difference of about 30 minutes had some reporters grumbling about early access by Fox and the Washington Examiner.
The Washington Post's Philip Bump tweeted that the two outlets "got an early look at a memo which was declassified this morning."
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, well known for collecting her own share of leaked material, tweeted, "Quite the way to make it clear this isn't political as Trump claimed he wanted to divorce it from."
Quite the way to make it clear this isn’t political as Trump claimed he wanted to divorce it from https://t.co/xWmDimOQz8— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 2, 2018
Chuck Todd tweeted that it was "not a good look" for some media outlets to get the news before others.
Not a good look by the House GOP to release cherry picked excerpts through friendly media outlets in order to build a narrative. Only reinforces the partisan look to all this. A truly nonpartisan act would have been a complete release without cherry picks— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) February 2, 2018
"Unlike, WH and GOP (who released memo selectively to friendly outlets first), DOJ says when and if they have a statement it will go out to everyone at the same time," added NBC's Katy Tur.
Unlike WH and GOP (who released memo selectively to friendly outlets first), DOJ says when and if they have a statement it will go out to everyone at the same time.— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) February 2, 2018
Another reporter for the Washington Post, James Hohmann, tweeted that Fox getting it first "will feed the narrative that this is a partisan exercise."