It is the job of the Fourth Estate to act as a check and a restraint on the others, to illumine the dark corners of Ministries, to debunk the bureaucrat, to throw often unwelcome light on the measures and motives of our rulers. ‘News’, as Hearst once remarked, ‘is something which somebody wants suppressed: all the rest is advertising’. That job is an essential one and it is bound to be unpopular; indeed, in a democracy, it may be argued that the more unpopular the newspapers are with the politicians the better they are performing their most vital task.
– Brian R. Roberts from a October 29, 1955 article in the London periodical “Time & Tide”
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
– H.L. Mencken
If you really want to know how weak Hillary Clinton is as a candidate, you merely have to appreciate that the U.S. media essentially acts as her own personal PR firm, yet the public still recognizes her as a dishonest crook. Brace yourself for the following story, it’s huge.
Earlier this week, we learned from Gawker that at least one U.S. reporter traded content in his article for information from Hillary Clinton’s staff while she was Secretary of State. In what is an almost hard to believe exchange, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, agreed to insert specific words and imagery into his article in return for a copy of Hillary’s upcoming speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
We have the exact exchange thanks to emails released from a 2012 Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). Gawker reports:
This is literally the first paragraph from Ambinder’s article:
When you think of President Obama’s foreign policy, think of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That’s the message behind amuscular speech that Clinton is set to deliver today to the Council on Foreign Relations. The staging gives a clue to its purpose:seated in front of Clinton, subordinate to Clinton, in the first row, will be three potentially rival power centers: envoys Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, and National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross.
If nothing else, Ambinder is very good at following instructions. Journalism, not so much.
Now back to Gawker.
Reines didn’t respond when we asked if he engaged in similar transactions with other reporters covering the State Department. But on the day of his trade with Ambinder, at least one other journalist used Reines’ preferred adjective—“muscular”—to describe the speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. That reporter was none other than Mike Allen of Politico.
We can’t say for sure that Reines implored Allen to describe Clinton’s speech as “muscular” and emphasize where particular audience members were seated, but that kind of request would hardly be out of the ordinary. As we noted above, Allen allowed Reines to ghost-write an item for his Playbook newsletter; and, in the course of attempting to secure an interview with Chelsea Clinton, told Reines he was prepared to submit interview questions to Clinton’s team in advance for their approval.
In any case, Reines’ strategy worked out nicely. For an article aggregating Allen’s piece, New York magazine quoted his use of “muscular” in the headline, and even commissioned an illustration of Clinton wearing the arms of a body builder.
Can you believe this? And you wonder why the public is so ignorant. Much of the press is not doing its job.
Continue reading at Liberty Blitzkrieg.
