FOIA Doc Release Reveals How Media Accepts Marching Orders from Hillary Clinton

Clinton Media Manipulation Revealed

The series of emails discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request show just how specific the demands are to journalists in order to get information from Clinton. The demand is to show her in a positive light, and if not, no content, and probably no future contact.

The emails in question, which were exchanged by Ambinder, then serving as The Atlantic’s politics editor, and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s notoriously combative spokesman and consigliere, turned up thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2012 (and which we are currently suing the State Department over). The same request previously revealed that Politico’s chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen, promised to deliver positive coverage of Chelsea Clinton, and, in a separate exchange, permitted Reines to ghost-write an item about the State Department for Politico’s Playbook newsletter. Ambinder’s emails with Reines demonstrate the same kind of transactional reporting, albeit to a much more legible degree: In them, you can see Reines “blackmailing” Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as “muscular” in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton’s own staff.

On the morning of July 15, 2009, Ambinder sent Reines a blank email with the subject line, “Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?” His question concerned a speech Clinton planned to give later that day at the Washington, D.C. office of the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank. Three minutes after Ambinder’s initial email, Reines replied with three words: “on two conditions.” After Ambinder responded with “ok,” Reines sent him a list of those conditions:

From: [Philippe Reines] Sent: Wednesday, July 15 2009 10:06 AM
To: Ambinder, Marc
Subject: Re: Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?

3 [conditions] actually

1) You in your own voice describe them as “muscular”

2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys — from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something

3) You don’t say you were blackmailed!

One minute later, Ambinder responded:

From: Ambinder, Marc
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:07 AM
To: Philippe Reines
Subject: RE: Do you have a copy of HRC’s speech to share?

got it

Ambinder made good on his word. The opening paragraph of the article he wrote later that day, under the headline “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smart Power’ Breaks Through,” precisely followed Reines’ instructions:

When you think of President Obama’s foreign policy, think of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That’s the message behind a muscular 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.

It is laughable to think that the mainstream media is anything but a Democrat lap dog, willing to report however it is required to in order to gain access and to help push forward Democrat programs and policy. Fortunately, talk radio and the internet broke the back of the mainstream media information embargo, unfortunately, there are still millions of people that gain the bulk of their information from network news.

Hillary Clinton should, in fact, be in jail for her acts of exposing covert programs and personnel to tremendous risk through her private email server scheme. But a cursory review of mainstream media outlets would reveal almost no coverage for that major story, or conversely, an effort to whitewash the story to help keep her campaign for president alive. The example here is but one small event that shows how the Left leads the media by the nose, and how Clinton, in particular, is a corrupt and dishonest player in the game of media manipulation. The saddest part is that mainstream media is a willing partner in the deception.

Source: gawker.com