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Wednesday, August 24, 2016

The Media Has no Credibility to Demand a Press Conference From Hillary

This has been a constant media whine.

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12608386/when-was-hillarys-last-press-conference

But here's the trouble: the media has cried wolf on the Clintons for 25 years. So for many of us, they simply have no credibility.

If you know the media will not treat her fairly than why would you care about her holding a presser? There is no reason. We know what it will be. 100 different ways of asking:

1. Why does no one like you?

2. You sure are evil for using private emails. The voters will never trust you for that.

3. You sure are evil for running the Clinton Foundation. Voters may have to vote for Trump with his Trump U, Trump Organization and his entire business model of trading in favors to voice their displeasure.

Remember that since the 90s through till today, the respectable media outlets have breathlessly picked up every Right wing conspiracy theory out there from Vince Foster, Whitewater, to Benghazi, to, yes the Clinton Foundation.

The media is still up to its own good as shown by the AP's very sloppy piece on the Clinton Foundation yesterday.

"The Associated Press has just shown us why it is important to be vigilant in how we consume the news as it is reported. They took some interesting information they gathered and spun it into something it wasn’t…scandalous. Here is their lead-in introduction:

"More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money – either personally or through companies or groups – to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president."

"At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million."

"Chris Cillizza is an example of a pundit who ran with it. In reference to that intro, he writes this:

"It is literally impossible to look at those two paragraphs and not raise your eyebrows. Half of all of the nongovernmental people Clinton either met with or spoke to on the phone during her four years at the State Department were donors to the Clinton Foundation! HALF."

"And those 85 people donated $156 million, which, according to my calculator, breaks down to an average contribution just north of $1.8 million. (Yes, I know that not everyone gave the same amount.)"

"It just plain looks bad. Really bad."

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/08/24/how-the-ap-spun-the-story-about-the-clinton-foundation/#.V72y3WhOqAl.twitter

Chris Cillizza tweeted about how much he loves being a journalist today. If he is, it's just barely. About the only time he seems to write his own post is when it's a Hillary hit job.

"Now…let me pull a couple of other quotes from what he said."

"No one is alleging that the Clinton Foundation didn’t (and doesn’t) do enormous amounts of good around the world…"

"To be clear: I have no evidence — none — that Clinton broke any law or did anything intentionally shady…"

"In other words, what it comes down to is “it just plain looks bad.” That is basically what most every drummed up “scandal” against Hillary Clinton comes down to: from the perspective of the people judging her – it looks bad. Welcome to the world of optics as scandal."

One way to look at this is that the AP spun the story they wanted to tell about this information. That happens almost all the time and we often don’t notice. To clarify how that happened here, note first of all the AP headline: “Many Donors to Clinton Foundation Met With Her at State.” As Adam Khan points out – that’s actually not true."

"Yes, the politics of optics, of perception being what matters and not the facts. Cillizza can admit himself he has no proof that she did anything intentionally shady. But what does that matter? It's all about 'optics' and the 'perceptions' of people who hate Hillary Clinton to begin with."

"The Clinton Foundation has 7000 donors and 60 met with her as Secretary of State. This is the big scandal?"

"So while the media might whine about pressers, most voters don't care about it. These pressers don't inform us of anything anyway other than what we already knew: the media is totally biased in its visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton and doing a presser won't change that in the least."

As for informing the public Yglesais has made the point that we know her actual policy stances very well whereas Trump's alleged access is not informative as he's a pathological liar. Where is the value in a presser where you like 91% of the time?
Speaking of Yglesias, he has a very good piece on this trainwreck of a CF story:

The AP’s big exposé on Hillary meeting with Clinton Foundation donors is a mess
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/ap-clinton-foundation-meeting

This is the media's problem. It's been 25 years of crying wolf. Their attacks for 25 years are a mess. So it's tough to start taking their whining about a presser seriously now. 

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