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The embarrassing epilogue to the media's obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924795/hillary-clinton-emails-new-york-times-state-department
Maybe Clinton’s emails shouldn’t have been covered as if they were the single most important issue facing 2016 voters?
By Ian Millhiser Oct 22, 2019, 8:10am EDT
We can all finally stop worrying about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Last week, Congress received a brief, nine-page report from the State Department, which summarizes the department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct work business while she was secretary of state. The report can be fairly summarized in two sentences: She shouldn’t have done that. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Thus, America finally has closure on a minor scandal that many of the nation’s most powerful and influential news editors treated as if it were the most important issue facing voters in the 2016 election. “In just six days,” according to an analysis of 2016 coverage published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” And the Times was hardly alone in this regard.
By contrast, the Times’s piece on the State Department report concluding that Her Emails weren’t actually that big of a deal ran on page A16 in print. (It was featured somewhat more prominently on the Times’s online homepage.) Similarly, data provided to Vox by the liberal group Media Matters indicates that television news — all three major cable networks plus all three broadcast stations — spent a total of less than 56 minutes combined on the new State Department report.
A screenshot of the front page of the New York Times on October 29, 2016. A letter from then-FBI Director James Comey brought Hillary Clinton’s emails back into news coverage just before Election Day.
The State Department’s report reaches two broad conclusions. Clinton’s “use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk” that classified information would be compromised. But “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”
</snip>
Maybe Clinton’s emails shouldn’t have been covered as if they were the single most important issue facing 2016 voters?
By Ian Millhiser Oct 22, 2019, 8:10am EDT
We can all finally stop worrying about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Last week, Congress received a brief, nine-page report from the State Department, which summarizes the department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct work business while she was secretary of state. The report can be fairly summarized in two sentences: She shouldn’t have done that. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Thus, America finally has closure on a minor scandal that many of the nation’s most powerful and influential news editors treated as if it were the most important issue facing voters in the 2016 election. “In just six days,” according to an analysis of 2016 coverage published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” And the Times was hardly alone in this regard.
By contrast, the Times’s piece on the State Department report concluding that Her Emails weren’t actually that big of a deal ran on page A16 in print. (It was featured somewhat more prominently on the Times’s online homepage.) Similarly, data provided to Vox by the liberal group Media Matters indicates that television news — all three major cable networks plus all three broadcast stations — spent a total of less than 56 minutes combined on the new State Department report.
A screenshot of the front page of the New York Times on October 29, 2016. A letter from then-FBI Director James Comey brought Hillary Clinton’s emails back into news coverage just before Election Day.
The State Department’s report reaches two broad conclusions. Clinton’s “use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk” that classified information would be compromised. But “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”
</snip>
Good take...
12 replies
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