(Newser)
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A Denver reporter assigned to an interview with Mitt Romney was banned by the campaign from asking any questions about abortion or Rep. Todd Akin and his "legitimate rape" comments, reports the Huffington Post. "I had about five minutes with him, and we got through a fair amount of material," said Shaun Boyd, a reporter for Denver CBS affiliate KCNC. "The one stipulation to the interview was that I not ask him about abortion or Todd Akin." Boyd irritated Romney during an interview earlier this year when she pressed him on same-sex marriage and medical marijuana. "Aren't there issues of significance that you'd like to talk about?" Romney asked. "This is a significant issue in Colorado," she responded.
The Romney campaign denied topics were off-limits in the interview, and other reporters have said there were no conditions for their meetings with Romney. "This is not how we operate," said a campaign spokesman. "The matter is being addressed." But the news director of KCNC, who arranged the Romney interview, said stipulations were clearly spelled out by the Romney camp, which was warned that such restrictions would be revealed. "They said at that time: 'We do have one stipulation: We don't want to discuss abortion,'" recalls news director Tim Wieland. "We said that obviously puts us in a difficult position because it's a subject we clearly want to ask about, so we would have to be up front about that stipulation." Wieland also explained that the reporter planned to ask Romney about Akin, and was told: "To be clear he is not going to discuss that either." Wieland said he told campaign representatives: "We are going to have to be clear that the stipulation was placed on the interview."
