Follow the Real Money
Arianna HuffingtonWhat is it with the media and the Clintons? Something about Bill and Hillary just seems to throw off the instrumentation of reporters. It's not that the reporting is consistently too negative, or consistently too positive, just that it's so often not the truth -- or at least, not the whole truth.
For instance, I can see why Hillary's camp would want to trumpet the $36 million that appeared in many of the campaign fundraising stories. But I can't understand why anyone in the media would lead a report with this number. The real story is that Obama's take for the primary may be staggeringly close to Hillary's, despite the fact that he is a newcomer competing against the most powerful money machine in American politics. We'll know just how close after the Obama campaign releases its own report and the Clinton campaign discloses how much of its first quarter take is earmarked for the general campaign.
But in the meantime, the media were happy to repeat the Clinton camp's pre-packaged story. The worst offender was Matt Drudge, who started off the day trumpeting the claim that Hillary had raised $36 million with the headlines: "AMERICA LOVES HILLARY -- TOP FUNDRAISER FOR ROUND ONE: $36 MILLION," and "Hillary in blowout with $36 million," and declaring her the "winner" of "round one."
Maybe Drudge happily declared her the "winner" because he shares the opinion that Hillary is the dream candidate for the GOP. Which means that, at least until the nomination, the interests of the Hillary camp and the right-wing media strangely converge with both sides celebrating her as an unstoppable juggernaut.But the larger question is, why did the rest of the media go along with this charade? Because, as the Hillary camp presented it, the story is about as real as John McCain's casual shopping stroll in Baghdad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/follow-the-real-money_b_44839.html