From CJR (originally published in Sept but relinked in a piece about the press conference yesterday), a story from last Sept: "The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings" by Hunter Walker:
"For me and more conventional outlets alike, it’s crucial to recognize that we can only deliver on behalf of the public if we’re forcefully challenging th…
From CJR (originally published in Sept but relinked in a piece about the press conference yesterday), a story from last Sept: "The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings" by Hunter Walker:
"For me and more conventional outlets alike, it’s crucial to recognize that we can only deliver on behalf of the public if we’re forcefully challenging the White House. The press corps learned to be more combative in the Trump era. We can’t lose that friction now."
Delivering for the American public? Certainly not the WHCA. This final graph is just ludicrous in so many ways. We went from the most corrupt, lying, nefarious administration to one that isn't perfect but is trying to clean up the mess and put our democracy back to together, yet the attitude is that journalists must treat them the same. American Journalism is, with few exceptions, broken.
I seem to remember the press being so forceful in challenging Clinton that they willing spread right wing slanders like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate. All were made up by right wing operatives but sold to the public by the NY Times. Because the Times gave credibility to those lies the rest of the media followed its lead. As Gene Lyon’s book made clear the media really were “Fools for Scandal”.
HRC's comments about the vast right wing conspiracy were true then (to anyone who was actually paying attention) and even more so now. And yet the press still smugly mock her for it.
Saint Comey broke FBI and DOJ rules when he made that extremely damaging public announcement about reopening that investigation. He did that because he knew the pro-Trump agents in the NY FBI would leak it if he didn’t and he was trying to appease them.
The IG report about the FBI handling of the email “scandal” describes the pressure Comey and McCabe felt from those agents who were openly defying DOJ and FBI rules by leaking to people like Rudy G, James Kallstrom and others in the media. Funny how the media has refused to cover that story or the fact that the IG later opened a separate investigation of those leaks. Who knows if that investigation ever concluded.
Interestingly, Comey didn't really talk about why the investigation was reopened - that it had to do with whether Huma Amedin had used Hillary's laptop to communicate with her pedophile ex-husband. That was not something anyone cared about clarifying at the time, not even Comey.
The reason those investigations pooped out may have been due to the fact that Comey chose not to pursue them after he finally closed Hillary's case for good.
Jeff Gerth covered the McDougal (Whitewater) trial for the NYT. He seems to have been the only guy in the room who didn't hear the prosecutor tell the jury that "the Clintons were victims of Jim McDougal." The narrative was already set, and the Times continued to flog Whitewater as a Clinton scandal.
Practically no one in the media reported on all the investigations of Whitewater that cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. All were lead by Republicans — Jay Stephens for the Resolution Trust Corporation’s investigation of the collapse of Madison Guaranty S&L, Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske’s investigation, Independent Counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, the House Banking Committee investigation headed by Jim Leach and the Senate Whitewater panel chaired by Al d’Amato. Not one of those investigations found any support for the accusations that had constantly been made about the Clintons in the media. As a result most of the public never knew about most of them either.
From CJR (originally published in Sept but relinked in a piece about the press conference yesterday), a story from last Sept: "The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings" by Hunter Walker:
"For me and more conventional outlets alike, it’s crucial to recognize that we can only deliver on behalf of the public if we’re forcefully challenging the White House. The press corps learned to be more combative in the Trump era. We can’t lose that friction now."
Delivering for the American public? Certainly not the WHCA. This final graph is just ludicrous in so many ways. We went from the most corrupt, lying, nefarious administration to one that isn't perfect but is trying to clean up the mess and put our democracy back to together, yet the attitude is that journalists must treat them the same. American Journalism is, with few exceptions, broken.
I seem to remember the press being so forceful in challenging Clinton that they willing spread right wing slanders like Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate. All were made up by right wing operatives but sold to the public by the NY Times. Because the Times gave credibility to those lies the rest of the media followed its lead. As Gene Lyon’s book made clear the media really were “Fools for Scandal”.
HRC's comments about the vast right wing conspiracy were true then (to anyone who was actually paying attention) and even more so now. And yet the press still smugly mock her for it.
Great point!
And Benghazi. And look how the press weaponized James Comey's reopening of the investigation of her goddamn emails 6 days before the election.
Saint Comey broke FBI and DOJ rules when he made that extremely damaging public announcement about reopening that investigation. He did that because he knew the pro-Trump agents in the NY FBI would leak it if he didn’t and he was trying to appease them.
The IG report about the FBI handling of the email “scandal” describes the pressure Comey and McCabe felt from those agents who were openly defying DOJ and FBI rules by leaking to people like Rudy G, James Kallstrom and others in the media. Funny how the media has refused to cover that story or the fact that the IG later opened a separate investigation of those leaks. Who knows if that investigation ever concluded.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/rudy-giuliani-fbi/
Interestingly, Comey didn't really talk about why the investigation was reopened - that it had to do with whether Huma Amedin had used Hillary's laptop to communicate with her pedophile ex-husband. That was not something anyone cared about clarifying at the time, not even Comey.
The reason those investigations pooped out may have been due to the fact that Comey chose not to pursue them after he finally closed Hillary's case for good.
Jeff Gerth covered the McDougal (Whitewater) trial for the NYT. He seems to have been the only guy in the room who didn't hear the prosecutor tell the jury that "the Clintons were victims of Jim McDougal." The narrative was already set, and the Times continued to flog Whitewater as a Clinton scandal.
Practically no one in the media reported on all the investigations of Whitewater that cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing. All were lead by Republicans — Jay Stephens for the Resolution Trust Corporation’s investigation of the collapse of Madison Guaranty S&L, Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske’s investigation, Independent Counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, the House Banking Committee investigation headed by Jim Leach and the Senate Whitewater panel chaired by Al d’Amato. Not one of those investigations found any support for the accusations that had constantly been made about the Clintons in the media. As a result most of the public never knew about most of them either.
https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/washington-post-continued-suggest-whitewater-wrongdoing-ignored-numerous-official
Peter Baker cut his teeth at the Times covering Whitewater, and before that covering the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment for Wapo.