Someday I Am Going to Have to Figure Out What Happens to People When They Start Writing for the Washington Post...
Kevin Drum: Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting Has Poisoned the Political Press | Mother Jones: "The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza....
Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them:
If a policymaker is a political leader and is covered primarily by the political press, there is a craving that borders on addictive to have a storyline
Bill Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University back in April:
And then once people settle on the storyline, there is a craving that borders on blindness to shoehorn every fact, every development, every thing that happens into the story line, even if it’s not the story....
That's an interesting comment from Bill Clinton. Is it true? Well, check this out from the start of Cillizza's column:
Amy Chozick... the reporter tasked with covering the Clintons.... Sounds like a plum gig, right? Until, that is... describes a "friendly 20-something press aide who the Clinton Global Initiative tasked with escorting me to the restroom," adding: "She waited outside the stall in the ladies’ room at the Sheraton Hotel, where the conference is held each year." Yes, this may be an extreme example. And, yes, the press strictures at the Clinton Global Initiative are the stuff of legend. But, the episode also reflects the dark and, frankly, paranoid view the Clintons have toward the national media. Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them.
Here's what makes this fascinating. If you click the link and read Chozick's piece, you'll learn that every reporter at the CGI is "cloistered in a basement at the Sheraton" and that an escort is required wherever they go, "lest one of us with our yellow press badges wind up somewhere where attendants with an esteemed blue badge are milling around." It's entirely fair to argue that this is absurdly restrictive. It's not fair to imply that this is special treatment that Chozick got because she's the beat reporter covering the Clintons.... But that's what Cillizza did.
In other words, he had already settled on a storyline, so he shoehorned the Chozick anecdote into his column to support that storyline. Which was exactly Clinton's complaint....
There ought to be at least a few mainstream reporters who also recognize some of the pathologies on their own side—those specific to the Clintons as well as those that affect presidential candidates of all stripes. How about an honest appraisal—complete with biting anecdotes—of how the political press has evolved over the past few decades and how storyline reporting has poisoned practically everything they do?
