Via Romenesko, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reveals in an online chat that the Secret Service is stopping people reporters from interviewing people at Palin rallies:
Arlington, Va.: The Secret Service has now labeled the "kill him" report as unfounded. Why isn't The Post giving this report as much coverage as the original false report received?
Dana Milbank:
Glad you asked, because I saw this earlier. This is actually about the incident in Scranton, not the one in Clearwater, Fla, that I wrote about here.
I wasn't at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty -- protecting the protectee -- and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.