Gawker has just published a piece detailing how Hillary Clinton’s press team insures that certain favored reporters give her positive coverage. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, J.K. Trotter shows how the exact wording from e-mails sent by Clinton spokeman Philippe Reines shows up in stories written by journalists. The article details how the game of providing “access” to the media is exchanged for positive spin by our establishment politicians.
Here is a taste:
Hillary Clinton’s supporters often argue that mainstream political reporters are incapable of covering her positively—or even fairly. While it may be true that the political press doesn’t always write exactly what Clinton would like, emails recently obtained by Gawker offer a case study in how her prodigious and sophisticated press operation manipulates reporters into amplifying her desired message—in this case, down to the very word that The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder used to describe an important policy speech.
The emails in question, which were exchanged by Ambinder, a former Atlantic contributing editor, and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s notoriously combative spokesman and consigliere, turned up thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2012 (and which we are currently suing the State Department over). The same request previously revealed that Politico’s chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen, promised to deliver positive coverage of Chelsea Clinton, and, in a separate exchange, permitted Reines to ghost-write an item about the State Department for Politico’s Playbook newsletter. Ambinder’s emails with Reines demonstrate the same kind of transactional reporting, albeit to a much more legible degree: In them, you can see Reines “blackmailing” Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as “muscular” in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton’s own staff.
Check out the entire piece, it’s worth a read. Something to ponder as you consider the various narratives we’ll all have to assess over the coming days, weeks and months.