While King Street Patriots invited conservative writers Andrew Breitbart and John Fund to headline its “True the Vote” summit this weekend, the Houston tea party group shunned a reporter from Talking Points Memo, according to a recent blog post by the liberal news organization.

TPM founder John Marshall writes the tea party group would not credential journalists for the event, and when the news site submitted its request any way, KSP delayed approval until after registration had reached capacity. That failed to deter TPM from sending reporter Ryan Reilly down to Houston with the hopes he could still cover the event as a member of the working press, but when Reilly arrived, he was barred from the summit at — apparently — the group’s request.

Marshall writes, “[T]he word seemed to be out to all the major attendees not to let Ryan in the hall under any circumstances.”

Reilly ended up watching the summit’s livestream from a lounge at the hotel, but as those following the event online know, the quality of the feed was so poor that a scrolling message apologizing for the shoddy uplink ran at the bottom of the video all weekend.

During the event, speakers bashed several news outlets including NPR and TPM; meanwhile, conservative activist and writer Warner Todd Huston delivered a crash course on how to combat the ‘left-controlled’ press via social media networking.

As the Texas Independent previously reported, KSP leader Catherine Engelbrecht claimed that her group’s efforts are “not about party or politics — it’s always been about principle.”