Media Bias is Real; Documents reveal relationships between Team Hillary and "Journalists"

“Reliable surrogates” and “friendly journalists” coordinate with Team Hillary to “shape” coverage Hillary Clinton Laughing Face the Nation

In an exclusive report, the Intercept has published a series of documents that show how Hillary and her team worked closely with the media in order to coordinate messaging and showing Hillary in a positive light.

The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.

As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories which the campaign wants circulated.

At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.”

One January 2015 strategy document – designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president – singled out reporter Maggie Haberman, then of Politico, now covering the election for the New York Times, as a “friendly journalist” who has “teed up” stories for them in the past and “never disappointed” them. Nick Merrill, the campaign press secretary, produced the memo, according to the document metadata:

That strategy document plotted how Clinton aides could induce Haberman to write a story on the thoroughness and profound introspection involved in Clinton’s decision-making process. The following month, when she was then at the Times, Haberman published two stories on Clinton’s vetting process; in this instance, Haberman’s stories were more sophisticated, nuanced and even somewhat more critical than what the Clinton memo envisioned.

But they nonetheless accomplished the goal Clinton campaign aides wanted to fulfill of casting the appearance of transparency on Clinton’s vetting process in a way that made clear she was moving carefully but inexorably toward a presidential run.

Hillary’s “reliable surrogates” in the media and in the Obama administration

The Intercept reveals a list of those in the media and other “good progressive helpers”:

Other documents listed those whom the campaign regarded as their most reliable “surrogates” – such as CNN’s Hilary Rosen and Donna Brazile, as well as Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden – but then also listed operatives whom they believed were either good “progressive helpers” or more potentially friendly media figures who might be worth targeting with messaging.

The metadata of the surrogate document shows that the file was authored by Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director of the campaign.

As The Intercept previously reported, pundits regularly featured on cable news programs were paid by the Clinton campaign without any disclosure when they appeared; several of them are included on this “surrogates” list, including Stephanie Cutter and Maria Cardona:

Glitzy messaging parties for “friendly journalists” and “good progressive helpers” The Intercept report reveals that Team Hillary frequently hosts parties limited to campaign staff and friendly “journalists.”

The Clinton campaign likes to use glitzy, intimate, completely off-the-record parties between top campaign aides and leading media personalities. One of the most elaborately planned get-togethers was described in an April, 2015, memo — produced, according to the document metadata, by deputy press secretary Jesse Ferguson — to take place shortly before Clinton’s official announcement of her candidacy. The event was an April 10 cocktail party for leading news figures and top-level Clinton staff at the Upper East Side home of Clinton strategist Joel Benenson, a fully-off-the-record gathering designed to impart the campaign’s messaging:

Shaping coverage to exclude “unhelpful stories” about “the Foundation, emails, etc.”

Many of the enduring Clinton tactics for managing the press were created by the campaign before she even announced her candidacy. A March 13, 2015 memo from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook provides insight into some of the tactics employed by the campaign to shape coverage to their liking. In particular, Mook was concerned that because journalists were assigned to cover Clinton, they needed to be fed a constant stream of stories that the campaign liked. As he put it, a key strategy was “give reporters who must cover daily HRC news something to cover other than the unhelpful stories about the foundation, emails, etc.”

Sure, all presidential—all political—campaigns do what they can to curry favor with the press, to plant stories, to push this angle over that, and etc., but this glimpse into how the sausage is made on the grand scale of a Hillary Clinton and an immense stable of eager-to-please, ideologically-driven pet “journalists” across all major media outlets (except Fox News) is enlightening. To say the least.

In the Founding Era and for generations after, newspapers were fractiously independent reflections of their publishers. Today - and since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary - journalists promote the fatuous conceit that “all journalists are objective.” Well, if all journalists agree that all journalists are objective, they can’t disagree with each other about very much, can they? And they don’t.
IMHO the reason is not far to look (tho it took me decades to be willing to see it). Samuel Moorse demonstrated the Baltimore-Washington telegraph in 1844, and by 1848 the Associated Press was beginning to form. The overriding mission of the AP was to distribute news nationwide while economizing on scarce, expensive bandwidth over the wires. That mission justified the creation of a network in which all major newspapers participated, and to which they all contributed. But, no problem - the editors were still independent of each other, right? And since the conglomeration of all the reports of all newspapers included all viewpoints, the AP itself was objective.
This is a pretty theory, but in practice it motivated the “all journalists are objective” meme with which we are so familiar that we could retch. That motivation was the fact that editors found themselves foisting on the public reports from reporters they had never even met - let alone had built up a trust relationship with. Thus, the mantra, a vagrant opinion with no visible means of support. And the AP wire became a virtual meeting of all major newspapers, with the very result which Adam Smith would have predicted:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
Fine. But why does that result in a pervasive “liberal” slant? Because the business of journalism is bad news. All journalists know that “If it bleeds, it leads.” And, “‘Man Bites Dog’ not ‘Dog Bites Man’”. The ineluctable result is propaganda against society as it is. Journalists are negative, and they know it - and yet they claim that “all journalists are objective.” Which, if you think about it, implies that negativity is objective. And that is the creed of the cynic.
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
The very reason for existence of government is a negative commentary on society. How could a unified, systematically negative - even cynical - institution be anything other than a promoter of more intrusive government???

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.