Regardless of who is your chosen – or least favorite – presidential candidate, independent minds should be concerned about the latest revelations in the news media’s unseemly relationships with government and political actors. While there are many responsible journalists working today, inside do ents and leaks have exposed serious lapses cons uting the most far-reaching scandal our industry has known. It’s our very own Newsgate.
Compromised reporting has always existed as a result of covert collaborations between reporters and political officials—Democrats and Republicans alike. For example, in my new book out next year,
The Smear, I’ll report on instances of improper collusion that surfaced during the Bush administration. The most recent available evidence is heavy on Democrat-ties due to the nature of the available do ents and leaks.
It can be argued that some individual accounts can be rationalized and are not serious breaches of ethics. But taken as a whole, it’s easy to see how we as journalists have done a poor job protecting ourselves from being co-opted by organized interests, often ones that are paid and politically-motivated. Whether we realize it or not, they’ve figured out how to exploit the media and use us to publish their propaganda. It implies a broad and growing trend that has seriously undermined the credibility of the news industry.
Opinion reporters and those who work for obviously ideological news groups are en led to publish party propaganda. It’s one matter to provide viewpoint journalism. But it’s quite another for us to act as a tool of any interest, publishing narratives or talking points upon suggestion or demand, without disclosing we’ve done just that.
The Players
The following accounts come from human sources, Freedom of Information Act do ents and Wikileaks emails. Obviously, this is just a small sampling of the behind the scenes dealings going on between reporters and their sources. Those mentioned below, to the extent they’ve offered comment, have denied doing anything improper or unethical. Some of the reporters have explained that the reason they provided advance drafts of stories to their news subjects, or allowed the subjects to make editorial choices—moves that are generally considered unethical—was to be responsible, as part of a fact check. Some have commented their actions reflect common practice.
The Associated Press (AP)
The State Department considered
AP reporters Matt Lee and Bradley Klapper “friendlies,” and planned to “place” Hillary Clinton email stories with them and dictate the timing of their release. The goal was to blunt the June 2015 news that Clinton had failed to provide Congress certain required emails. Clinton campaign press officer Nick Merrill
coordinated directly with the State Department on the plan to use
AP to “lay this out before the [Republican] majority on the [Benghazi] committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it.” Merrill posited, “It would be good to frame this a little and frankly to have it break tomorrow when we’ll likely be close or in the midst of a [Supreme Court] decision taking over the news hyenas.”
AP published a story the following day.
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC American Bridge claimed it “placed” negative stories about Jeb Bush with
AP and other news outlets.
(Also, see Dilanian below under
LA Times)
The Atlantic
Marc Ambinder from
The Atlantic, asked a Hillary Clinton aide for advance
text of a speech. The aide dictated “conditions,” including “1) You in your own voice describe [Hillary’s words] as ‘muscular’,” to which
Ambinder agreed. Ambinder formerly worked for
ABC, CBS and
National Journal.
CNBC
CNBC anchor John Harwood, who moderated a presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, appears to have offered
helpful thoughts and analyses
to the Clinton campaign.
CNN
The Clinton campaign
emailed that
CNN politics producer Dan Merica and Clinton were “basically courting each other.”
In an email, Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile (then a
CNN contributor) said she obtained an
advance presidential debate question and passed it on to the Hillary campaign. The question was later asked in a March 13 Democratic presidential town hall including Democrat Bernie Sanders and co-hosted by
CNN. Brazile says she didn’t do what she allegedly said she did in the email.
CNN political commentator Maria Cardona emailed Democratic National Committee officials a draft of her opinion piece that attacked Bernie Sanders prior to the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She invited the DNC’s editorial input and made changes accordingly, asking the DNC, “Is this better?”
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC American Bridge claimed it “placed” negative stories about Jeb Bush with
CNN and other news outlets.
American Bridge also claimed that a report it produced against the conservative Koch Brothers (billionaire donors) resulted in “a high-profile
CNN story.”
(See also Stelter under
New York Times)
Daily Kos
A source for the pro-Hillary Clinton smear group Media Matters named
Daily Kos as one of several news outlets that are helpful in getting out the Media Matters agenda, according to
Daily Caller.
Huffington Post
“The [
Huffington Post] guys were good, Sam and Nico,” said a Media Matters source to
Daily Caller, speaking of reporters who will report what Media Matters puts out. The comment apparently refers to Nico Pitney and Sam Stein.
Los Angeles Times
Ken Dilanian, who covered the CIA for the
LA Times, explicitly promised positive news coverage and sometimes sent the CIA press office entire
story drafts for review prior to publication, according to the
Intercept, which obtained internal CIA emails and called Dilanian “the CIA’s mop-up man.” Dilanian now works for
AP.
Jim Rainey of the
LA Times “took a lot of our stuff,” a Media Matters source told
Daily Caller.
MSNBC
“Media Matters staff had the direct line of
MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and used it,” a Media Matters source told
Daily Caller. “If we published something [negative] about
Fox in the morning, [
MSNBC would] have it on the air that night verbatim. We were pretty much writing their prime time. But then, virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”
New York Times
“Brian Stelter at the
New York Times [now at
CNN] was helpful,” in publishing the Media Matters narrative, a source told
Daily Caller.
New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich gave Hillary Clinton the opportunity to approve or
veto her quotes. He later explained that was because he agreed to make the original interview on-the-record and required her approval to use selected pieces of it.
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC American Bridge claimed it placed negative stories about Jeb Bush with the
New York Times and other news outlets.
(See also Haberman under
Politico)
Politico
Staffers at Media Matters say they “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith [formerly of
Politico now editor-in-chief at
Buzzfeed.com],” according to
Daily Caller. “Ben Smith will take stories and write what you want him to write.”
Politico chief investigative reporter Ken Vogel emailed soon-to-be-published story to Democratic National Committee official Mark Paustenbach “
per agreement” and invited his “thoughts.” Paustenbach gave the draft to the DNC’s head of communications, Luis Miranda. “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach told Miranda.
In his effort to get an interview with Chelsea Clinton, Mike Allen,
Politico’s chief political reporter offered to
provide questions in advance, “precisely” agreed upon with a Hillary Clinton aide. “The interview would be ‘no-surprises’: I would work with you on topics, and would start with anything she wants to cover or make news on. Quicker than a network hit, and reaching an audience you care about with no risk,” Allen wrote the aide. After the email became public, Allen apologized and said he would never do what he offered to do in his email.
Hillary Clinton staffers described Maggie Haberman, then of
Politico, as an ideal “
friendly journalist” with whom to place stories. “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed,” writes one staffer in an email. Haberman now works for the
New York Times. The emails were first reported in
The Intercept.
Read the Intercept article by Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang
Salon
A Media Matters source told
Daily Caller that
Salon proved to be a “helpful” news outlet for getting its message across.
San Francisco Chronicle
A Media Matters source told
Daily Caller that Joe Garofoli at the
Chronicle “took a lot of our stuff.”
The Wall Street Journal
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC American Bridge claimed it placed negative stories about Jeb Bush with the
Wall Street Journal and other news outlets.
The Washington Post
Democratic National Committee officials discussed “placing”
a story with the
Washington Post’s Greg Sargent to put a positive spin on some bad news for Hillary Clinton. The goal was “to make sure the first story out of the gate is as helpful as possible,” according to a
DNC official. “But, the specific reporter is not as important as getting it to an outlet before the news breaks so we can help control the narrative on the front end. Otherwise this may likely get spun in a not-so-helpful way. We should also get Rep. [Elijah] mings on the phone with that reporter.” The email continues, “…can we please consider giving Sargent the first bite to get a good first story out there? Can I have him call you? We had been working him for weeks in general on writing up something positive, we think he’d play ball.”
Staffers at Media Matters counted on the liberal
Plum Line, Sargent’s
Washington Post blog, according to a source who spoke to
Daily Caller. “Greg Sargent will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff,” claimed the source. “If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game.”
“We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the
Washington Post],” the Media Matters source told
Daily Caller.
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC American Bridge claimed it placed negative stories about Jeb Bush with the
Washington Post and other news outlets.
The Strategy
A window into how political interests, including super PACs, work to influence and manipulate the news is found in an internal Clinton campaign memo published on Wikileaks this month. In it, the Hillary Clinton super PAC “Correct The Record” boasts it had placed 21 “strategic memos” with the media that “led to stories in a number of news outlets including
National Journal,
Politico,
USA Today,
MSNBC and
The Hill.” Correct The Record has joined other pro-Hillary Clinton groups founded by Clinton surrogate David Brock, including Media Matters and the American Bridge super PAC, in attacking Clinton’s opponents. Correct The Record’s targets have included Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump.
Correct The Record president Brad Woodhouse has repeatedly appeared in news interviews without the disclosure that he operates a Hillary Clinton super PAC that coordinates openly with the campaign, unlike any other super PAC.
Among other functions, the Correct The Record memo says it
“arms more than 300 surrogates with facts and talking points to spread the message and the facts on cable and other news” and
“deploy products targeted to specific audiences.”
One of the “products” is “pushback do ents” distributed to “members of the media, key surrogates, pundits, opinion leaders” to refute “false information” about Clinton. The do ents include “research analyses,” “talking points” and “blog-style posts made specifically for the web.” Other products are “media statements” and “positive media relations with Clinton beat reporters, producers and editors…Our communications team is constantly in touch with the media and provide, whether in our own voices or in the voices of surrogates, a constant stream of statements to the press on all things Clinton related. And because media relations isn’t just going on the record, some of our team’s most important work is killing bad stories before they ever get written.”
Under “Metrics,” the Correct The Record memo cites its mailing list of 960 members of the national media and 10,756 regional reporters in 28 states. It sends talking points and memos regularly to 369 televisions producers and bookers. It says its work has “impacted the framework for dialogue about 2016, Clinton, and her compe ors.” The group says it has “engaged trusted names” to write opinion editorials for newspapers across the country. “Correct The Record has placed 132 op-eds nationally and in strategic local markets” and, since May 15, “helped write and place 36 op-eds across the country in a number of publications including Politico, Times Union, Huffington Post, CNN, Washington Blade, and New Jersey’s Bergen Record.”–Correct The Record internal memo
Correct The Record also says it’s conducted “over 900 on-the-record and off-the-record media interviews” and “identified 372 surrogates including influential and frequent pundits on broadcast and cable news for Presidential 2016 politics and provided them around 80 sets of talking points, background materials and briefings on topical issues” to defend Clinton and her record.
American Bridge
More information on how super PACs manipulate the news media is found in an internal memo written by Brock’s pro-Hillary American Bridge super PAC. It was also published by Wikileaks.
The opposition research group set up “war rooms” for the first time on site in states where its trackers were monitoring Republican candidates to “interact with reporters on site, and to cut and move footage more efficiently so we can break news before anyone else.” In other words, American Bridge uses its formidable resources to do one-sided investigative work and then peddles the product as “news” to reporters.
Apparently, it works. The American Bridge memo said its on-site war room in Wisconsin collected negative clips about Senator Ron Johnson and got them covered by
Talking Points Memo, the
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
The Capital Times,
The Hill, and
Roll Call.
In the memo, American Bridge also bragged that
CNN was receptive to its outreach. “
CNN recently ran a feature story on our use of livestream technology.” Examples of the group’s rapid response efforts getting picked up by the press included “Jeb Bush’s comments on privatizing Social Security (June 2015), his comment that “all lives matter” (July 2015), Chris Christie jumping on Jeb Bush’s ‘work longer hours’ bandwagon (July 2015), and Rick Perry slamming Jeb’s economic growth record in Florida (July 2015).”
“Several of these were clipped, cut, and shared on social media and/or by press release while the candidates were still delivering the same speech,” read the American Bridge memo.
American Bridge said it “placed” negative stories about Bush with CNN, Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and several key Florida outlets. “Our tracking operation has also been key in undermining Jeb through a constant barrage of rapid response attacks.”
One month after the 2014 midterm elections, American Bridge released a “primer” to “define the field before the prospective candidates could define themselves for the electorate.” The group took credit for successfully marketing a negative media narrative on Scott Walker, leading to his downfall. “We developed a powerful narrative of cronyism, outsourcing, and looking out for the interests of big business over middle class families, which undercut his economic message,” said the group’s memo. It also took credit for “forcing the Kochs [conservative billionaire donors]…out of the shadows” and said an American Bridge report against the Kochs resulted in “a high-profile
CNN story.”
These activities appear to be within the law. But these are just two of many groups working to influence the news. The breadth and scope of their operations confirms how important it is for news organizations to set up policies and systems to retain their independence.
More on all of this in my upcoming book,
The Smear.
https://sharylattkisson.com/newsgate-2016/
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thinking 2 party corporate puppet system is a democracy 
