Good Reads On "Clinton Rules" Reporting: Clinton Foundation Edition (UPDATED)

The "feed- the- preferred- narrative" journalists amoralists at the Associated Press had a hit piece on the Clinton Foundation and so- called "pay for play" considerations by then- Secretary of State Clinton.  The piece is an example of elite "journalists" cherry- picking and rearranging information, and as such was dutifully and happily picked up by such luminaries in the field as the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle. It's a perfect example of "Clinton Rules" reporting. Here's a sample of what you need to know about this piece of ratf*cking by our esteemed press.

Vox:

Tuesday afternoon, Stephen Braun and Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press released the results of a review of State Department appointment data that they used to make some striking claims about Hillary Clinton’s schedule as secretary of state.

According to their reporting, Clinton spent a remarkably large share of her time as America’s chief diplomat talking to people who had donated money to the Clinton Foundation. She went out of her way to help these Clinton Foundation donors, and her decision to do so raises important concerns about the ethics of her conduct as secretary and potentially as president. It’s a striking piece of reporting that made immediate waves in my social media feed, as political journalists of all stripes retweeted the story’s headline conclusions. 

Except it turns out not to be true. The nut fact that the AP uses to lead its coverage is wrong, and Braun and Sullivan’s reporting reveals absolutely no unethical conduct. In fact, they found so little unethical conduct that an enormous amount of space is taken up by a detailed recounting of the time Clinton tried to help a former Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s also the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Charles P. Pierce:

The topic is The Clinton Foundation, and the new e-mails released by the ratfcking legal operation known as Judicial Watch, which got the AP all a'quiver. Here is the simple answer to that: no quid pro quo, no pay-for-play, no matter how many respected people want to believe it's there.

Nancy LeTourneau:

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. 

BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 23, 2016

Clinton Foundation has 7000 donors.

Hillary met with 60 as SoS= ~1%.

Wouldn't have made for a great AP tweet @brianefallon @SheWhoVotes

— Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) August 24, 2016

If in the catastrophic event neo- fascist genital wart Donald "Rump" Trump is elected President, you can thank "Clintons are shady" narrative- boosters like this, and those bullshit catapulters who wrote them.

UPDATE: Mother Jones' David Corn looks at the story the broken media won't cover: the work of the Clinton Foundation.

UPDATE II:  Two days later, with time to correct, the assholes are still sticking to their story.

UPDATE III:  And, finally,

Really an embarrassment for AP, and other journalists who just glommed onto story uncritically. Where are standards? https://t.co/b2PhEkdwVO

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) August 24, 2016

Letters We Wish We'd Written -- Clinton Media Noise

From today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

The June 3 front-page article “Results and repercussions,” about the Clinton Foundation, demonstrated the best of international philanthropy, which can’t happen without the double-edged sword of massive funding. The Internal Revenue Code strictly limits a private, tax-exempt foundation’s activities, and there are no indications that any of those provisions have been violated. 

It is unfortunate that the Clinton Foundation has come under a cloud, even though it has helped many individuals and countries in dire need. I hope it will continue its important work despite becoming a lightning rod for those wanting to attack Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. I also hope the public will be savvy enough to recognize the good and dismiss the noise.

Nancy Ortmeyer Kuhn, Bethesda

While the Bezos Bugle's gaggle of cub reporters Beltway conventional wisdom purveyors continues to harp on "appearances" in all things Clinton (see, for instance, the hair ball Dana Milbank coughed up in the same edition), the only "appearance" that's becoming clear is that the corporate media is intent on stirring up as much faux scandal as it can to paint Clinton with the Reince "Prepuce" Priebus brush of "inauthentic" and "untrustworthy."  After all, they're partners with the right-wing hatchet man who wrote the error-filled book "Clinton Cash" (and if you lay down with dogs ...).  In the meantime, the philanthropic work of the Clinton Foundation is likely to suffer from this Republican and media politicization of "appearances." 

 

That none of this -- or the e-mails, or Benghazi!!! -- has anything to do with an election based on  debating policies that will improve the lives of low- and middle-income Americans means nothing to the jaded, insular media.  They have axes to grind, scores to settle, and product to sell.  So this will be with us for the entire campaign in one form or another (remember the Cokie Roberts rule: "It's out there" so it must continue to be "reported").

No wonder she avoids these stinkwads like the plague.

BONUS:  Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has a piece on how other precincts of the "liberal media" are busy constructing other false Clinton narratives. 

Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept. - Truth Vs. Perception

Yesterday, we linked to a Chris "Lizard" Cillizza hit piece questioning Hillary Clinton's "trustworthiness."  The only question we have looking back is, what took the Republican-wired Cillizza so long to write this piece?  After all, emptiest- suit- in- America (h/t Charles Pierce) and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince "Prepuce" Priebus started flogging the "trustworthiness" theme in late April;  Cillizza must not be reading his RNC e-mail in a timely manner.  In any event, we present two Letters We Wish We'd Written that appear in today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle taking to task Cillizza and, by extension, the hit job "reporting" on the Clinton Foundation that the paper has been engaging in after cutting a deal with right-wing conspiracy writer (and Sarah Palin bud) Peter Schweizer, of "Clinton Cash" notoriety:

Why is it as bad for Frank Giustra to give $100 million to the Clinton Foundation for its charitable work as for the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson to give more than a billion dollars for direct political purposes [“Mining mogul’s ties to Clintons under scrutiny,” front page, May 4]? I grant that Hillary Clinton regularly shows poor judgment in such things, [“For Clinton, a trust deficit to surmount,” Monday Fix, May 4], but can we trust her less than we trust Republicans who actively solicit funds under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision?

Carl E. Nash, Washington

In his May 4 Monday Fix column, Chris Cillizza asked, “Is Hillary Clinton honest enough to be president?” He cited four reasons to doubt her honesty: Whitewater, Travelgate, Monica Lewinsky and the Marc Rich pardon. 

The Whitewater deal cost the Clintons money and was investigated. No misconduct was found. Travelgate was about the firing of the staff who arranged travel for the media. The record-keeping there was so bad that an audit was impossible. The firings were found to be proper. It seems petty to blame Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton’s private misconduct with Ms. Lewinsky. The Marc Rich pardon was a reasonable subject for criticism.

Of the four examples of dishonesty, two were not dishonest, one was private conduct that hurt Hillary Clinton and one was a legal act by Bill Clinton with a questionable motive.

Assuming that Mr. Cillizza knew all this, I guess he is saying that the truth doesn’t matter, only the perception. 

Mark Weaver, Catonsville, Md.

The problem with the Republican and Republican-enabling media line of attack is that, as we've said, the reality is that the hateful, divisive, backward- looking ideology of Republicans turns most sentient people off to the extent that Republicans have, we hope, an insurmountable deficit of their own.   Here's how E.J. Dionne, Jr., frames it:

Republicans hope that if they can just stir up enough doubts about Clinton, one of their candidates will make it through in 2016. Perhaps this can work. But their anti-Clinton focus will do little to resolve the underlying weaknesses of an ideology and a party that, even against a 67-year-old Democrat, do not look like the wave of the future.

Poll: Hillary Clinton Seen More Favorably Now Than Before Republican And Media Attacks

Do tell:

Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to have initially weathered a barrage of news about her use of a private email account when she was secretary of state and the practices of her family’s foundation, an indication that she is starting her second presidential bid with an unusual durability among Democratic voters.

Americans now view Mrs. Clinton more favorably and more see her as a strong leader than they did earlier in the year, despite weeks of scrutiny about her ethics, a New York Times/CBS News poll has found. And nearly nine in 10 Democrats say the nation is ready to elect a woman president.  (our emphasis)

No doubt this will only spur Republicans and their media enablers (=cough= Lizard Cillizza =cough= Ruth(less) Marcus =cough=) to even greater heights of non-scandal mongering.  But as much as they flogged the private email account non-scandal, who's talking about that now?  We believe the same will be true with the Clinton Foundation non-scandal, except that the negative media coverage is encouraging donors to back off, to the detriment of people around the world who benefit from the Foundation's charities.  Nice work, dicks.

Here's a clue for the media:  most people have become inured to this.  They had eight years of Republicans and the media trying to impugn and impeach the Clintons.  People have observed and lived with the Clintons for nearly 25 years, and guess what:  they've made up their minds about them already.  More importantly, they see the cruel, reactionary policies and feather-weight alternatives on the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party side, and they're sentient enough to know what's important and what's not, unlike your "mainstream media."