Wall of Silence Surrounds MoCo Press Rules

Montgomery County adopted its first formal policy restricting who may ask questions at Council President press briefings in January 2023, but nearly three years later officials refuse to explain why the rule was needed, who wrote it, who approved it, or how it came to be.

For decades, the Council operated without any written rules governing which reporters could ask questions at its regular media availabilities. That changed abruptly just one month after former CNN reporter Evan Glass assumed the Council presidency in December 2022. In January 2023 a document titled Council President Media Availabilities Policy quietly appeared. For the first time it codified who counts as “news media” and limited access to a select group.

When questions arose about how and why this gatekeeping rule was created, the record went dark. In response to a Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) request, Chief Legislative Attorney Christine Wellons acknowledged that at least eight draft versions, internal legal memoranda, and related emails about the policy exist. She refused to release any of them, citing attorney–client privilege and the deliberative process exemption. The result is a complete blackout on who initiated the policy, what problem it was meant to solve, or whether it was vetted or approved by any public process.

Glass’s office initially offered only a single explanation: that the policy “codified already existing practices and included best practices from other jurisdictions.” Follow-up questions asked whether the policy was drafted before his presidency, whether there was any formal vote or approval, what prompted its sudden creation, and whether it had been used to exclude outlets. None were answered.

After Councilmember Glass’s office confirmed the existence of documents pointing to the origin of the press policy, attorney Christine Wellons reversed a previous claim that the materials didn’t exist and instead evoked attorney-client privilege.

Every sitting Councilmember was contacted for comment. None, except Councilmember Andrew Friedson, would speak out. Friedson, a past Council President and currently a candidate for County Executive, said in a Facebook post that if elected he would allow broader media participation in his briefings. Several other Councilmembers privately expressed that they disagreed with how the current policy is being applied but declined to say so publicly. Current Council President, Kate Stewart, having used the policy to restrict press access earlier this year, has circled the wagons.

The Media Availabilities Policy itself is controversial because it gives the Council President sole control over who counts as a journalist. It ties access to decades-old, obsolete codes from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and American Press Association, written long before the rise of digital-first and nontraditional reporting. The policy allows subjective judgments about whether a media outlet uses satire, advocacy, or anonymous sources, which can be used to shut out critics. And it was crafted entirely behind closed doors, leaving the public with no way to know who was excluded or why.

By locking up every record of how the policy was conceived and by declining to answer basic questions about its origins, the Council has effectively built a wall of silence around the story of its own press restrictions. A rule that governs which voices may question the County’s most powerful elected official now exists with no visible origin, no documented debate, and no accountability.

That secrecy also carries an uncomfortable irony. Montgomery County’s government is entirely Democratic, and its elected officials often warn nationally about threats to a free press when Republican leaders try to silence critics. Yet here, on a local stage, those same values appear abandoned. A Democratic-led body has built a press-access rule behind closed doors, refused to release the records of its creation, and declined to defend it publicly, even as one of their own quietly uses it to keep journalists they don't like out of the press pool.