Last week was a near catastrophic episode for the American republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, as lewd comments he made over ten years ago re-surfaced to derail his campaign.
But what was more astonishing was how majority of the American media outlets buried an equally important and revealing story on texts of Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street banks. The two stories broke out at nearly the same time but the media focused mainly on the Trump story.
While Trump’s taped lewd comments are deplorable, this should not have prevented a responsible and non-partisan US media from equally reporting the Clinton revelations by Wikileaks.
According to the Wikileaks expose: Hillary Clinton told Wall Street bankers including Goldman Sachs that what she says in public is different from what she says in private; she called her supporters a bucket of losers; she admitted blacks and Muslims immigrants unlike Jewish, Chinese and Indian immigrants are never do-wellers; she wants a single payer healthcare system and is pro-TPP despite what she tell her supporters; she wants hemispheric common markets and open borders.
Hillary Clinton has been revealed to have a very cozy relationship with the US media, which has been found to work closely with Clinton’s campaign to present her in a favorable, transparent light – even planting stories, new email leaks suggest.
These facts are difficult to be discredited from the latest cache of classified Clinton campaign emails seen by The Intercept, which in turn received them from Guccifer 2.0 – the hacker who’s reportedly behind several high-profile intrusions.
These emails includes campaign strategies aimed at keeping the public perception of Clinton favorable, focusing particularly on her transparency, especially in light of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server.
The strategies sometimes reveal the campaign presiding over stylistic points and emphasizing what is to be described as “on the record.”
A very important evidence is one January 2015 document which includes references to Maggie Haberman. Formerly of Politico, Haberman now covers the presidential election for the New York Times.
According to the leaked document, she’s a “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” in painting a positive picture of Clinton.
Haberman was found to be useful by the Clinton campaign, providing two stories which were meant to shed light, among other things, on how Hillary Clinton’s thought process works and how successful her cabinet members were.
The New York Times piece entitled ‘Hillary Clinton Begins Process of Vetting — Herself’, talks about how open Clinton is to researching herself and how committed to transparency that makes her. Especially given how her opponents mainly focus on her foundation work, or the millions she’s received in paid speech appearances, as well as her relationship to Wall Street.
Neither Merrill nor Haberman responded to the Intercept’s requests for comment, nor did they deny that the document exists.
One of the documents, entitled ‘The Press and Surrogate Plan’, talked of willing personnel in the media who could always be put to good use, at CNN or elsewhere. Clinton staffers were also careful in distinguishing between “progressive helpers” and those who were potentially friendly, but could be further coerced.
These media surrogates would often include TV pundits whose roles would appear to be neutral, but who were enrolled by the campaign. The metadata for the ‘surrogate’ document traces it back to its author Jennifer Palmieri – the Clinton campaign communications director.
Furthermore, as described in an April 2015 memo, there would be secret get-togethers involving media big shots and celebrity TV personalities – a notable one would take place in the aftermath of Clinton’s running announcement at the home of one of her strategists on the Upper East Side.
The informal cocktail party was completely off-the-record, and intended to coordinate how Clinton’s campaign would be presented to the American public.
