While Hillary Clinton has become much more accessible to the press in recent weeks than rival Donald Trump, her reluctance to hold press conferences for most of the year was a major sticking point with reporters.

New emails illegally hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s personal email account show he expressed concern about Clinton’s desire to limit reporter Q & A sessions. “Can we survive not answering questions from press at message events,” Campaign vice chair Huma Abedin asked, relaying a concern from Clinton that her message was getting lost when she took questions on unrelated topics.                                

“If she thinks we can get to Labor Day without taking press questions, I think that's suicidal,” Podesta responded in May of 2015. “We have to find some mechanism to let the stream out of the pressure cooker.”

Abedin responded to she was “not suggesting no q and a at all,” but that Clinton wanted to take questions on days she wasn’t doing major speeches or that she could take questions from “real people” instead of reporters.

NBC News has not independently identified the authenticity of the Wikileaks emails and Clinton campaign has declined to identify them. The FBI suspects the Russian government is behind the hack, according to the Wall Street Journal.