But Her Emails

Morning Dispatch

This seems reasonable . . .

I remember how ominous it felt in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election when the hack of the Clinton campaigns emails morphed into an attack on the candidate herself. The coverage seemed overwrought, biased, and incessant. As to the last point, it turns out to have been true.

In a Vox piece by Jen Kirby published on December 7, 2017, she pointed to a study conducted by David Rothschild and Duncan Watts. In it, the researchers found that, “In just six days, the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” [emphasis mine]

Matt Yglesias, also writing in Vox, observed,

One malign result of obsessive email coverage is that the public is left totally unaware of the policy stakes in the election. Another is that the constant vague recitations of the phrase ‘Clinton email scandal’ have firmly implanted the notion that there is something scandalous about anything involving Hillary Clinton and email, including her campaign manager getting hacked or the revelation that one of her aides sometimes checked mail on her husband’s computer.”

The repetition, the false notion that this was some kind of scandal, led the casual observer (most people, in other words), to conclude that there was, indeed, something nefarious and disqualifying about Clinton’s actions.

Kirby acknowledges that the Times and other corporate media outlets did cover Donald’s scandals, “But there were so many, from relentless daily outrages to the dirt from Trump’s past, that it made it more likely, maybe even necessary, for journalists to move on to the next one thing.” This led to the tragic reality that, according to Watts, “The monolithic story that’s constantly renewing itself seems to be disproportionately damaging compared to this kaleidoscope.”

At the time, Donald relished the wall-to-wall coverage of the supposed Hillary Clinton email “scandal,” because what should have been an investigation into a hostile foreign power’s attempt to interfere in our elections, became a mad, if inadvertent, drive to do Russia’s bidding. Or as Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon put it days before the 2016 election, it was remarkable how quickly very real concerns about Russian interference almost immediately gave way to focusing on the information that was revealed: “Just like Russia wanted.”

Donald was a loud and vociferous proponent of publishing the Clinton campaigns hacked material. In what should have been a scandal for him, he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Russia was—and so was he.

Now that the Trump campaign has been hacked, allegedly by Iran, they are less sanguine about publicizing hacked material. The campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung released this statement: “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

The three media outlets known to have received the leaked materials, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Politico, now seem to agree that discretion is the better part of valor.

As Matt Murray, executive editor of The Post, explained, “This episode probably reflects that news organizations aren’t going to snap at any hack that comes in and is marked as ‘exclusive’ or ‘inside dope’ and publish it for the sake of publishing. All of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not.”

In August 2024, the consensus seems to be that the focus should be on the hack, not on the content of the documents. How judicious. How temperate. How responsible.

The New York Times won’t discuss its decision not to print details of the hacked internal communications because the Times is apparently above it all and owes us nothing. If only they had espoused such lofty ideals in the lead up to the 2016 election. If only the privacy of a presidential candidate were respected with such integrity back then. But, back then, the presidential candidate in question was Hillary Clinton. In ways subtle and unsubtle, the Times had long since let its preference for Donald Trump—if not as a potential president, then as a candidate who made the horse-race more interesting—be known.

Without knowing what’s contained in the hacked documents, it’s difficult to say whether these news agencies are making the right decision by withholding the information from the public.

It’s just remarkable that when the corporate media finally learns a lesson, it still benefits Donald Trump.