“From the White House grounds to town halls across the country, politicians and candidates have been attempting to block members of the media from covering them — and advocates say it’s raising serious press freedom concerns,” Jenna Monnin wrote in this new story for The Washington Sun.

The newest example is a doozy. A video of GOP Rep. Andy Harris has gone viral because the congressman freaked out and falsely accused student journalist Cat Murphy of illegally recording him on Tuesday night.

Harris had just appeared at a campaign forum with his Democratic challenger in Cambridge, Maryland. He bristled at questions from several reporters, including Murphy, who was covering the event for the Capital News Service, the newswire staffed by students at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

“You cannot film me,” Harris said to Murphy, 22, who knew her rights and said, “Yes, I can.”

It went on for a while, with Harris threatening to call the authorities and have her phone seized. “Take her camera,” he demanded. “Get an officer in here,” he said a moment later. He then bolted out of the room.

The Baltimore Banner and other outlets published the unflattering footage. By yesterday afternoon, the grad student was on CNN’s “The Lead,” where Jake Tapper noted that most journalists reach retirement without such a confrontation with an elected official. (True!)

“I won’t lie, it’s been a lot,” Murphy said. “But I was focused on doing my job.”

Murphy said she hadn’t heard from Harris’ office and won’t be deterred from continuing to cover him. Tapper’s parting words to her: “Hopefully we can get you to come work at CNN after you graduate in December.” Amen.

Now Harris’s challenger is trying to capitalize on the episode. As the Sun story noted, there have been other dust-ups between Republican candidates and reporters this campaign season. Although the hostility more often comes from the right, “multiple Democratic candidates have also denied media access across primary and general election campaign events,” Monnin added.

Let’s just call it what it is: Loser behavior. We’re liable to see even more of it as the midterms approach…

I suspect President Trump will have something to say about the latest Fox News poll, released last night, which registered Trump’s job approval at 36%, a record low in the network’s polling.

Dana Blanton wrote in her recap: “The top five voter concerns are government corruption (60% extremely concerned), inflation (58%), gas prices (50%), government leadership (49%), and healthcare (48%). And double digits more trust the Democrats than the Republicans to handle each of those.”

Good luck finding the poll on Fox’s home page; the editors decided to bury the bad-for-Trump news. But you can read the full findings here…