Just a couple of excerpts. There’s a lot more, and it’s really good, foundational stuff about the relationship between the press and people in postions of power. Please go read the rest. (And keep the “tire-swing” stories that were once so popular here in mind, e.g., “Surprise! McCain BBQ attendees skew their reporting of him.”)
Journalists too easily charmed by power, access, and creamy risotto
WHEN ROBERT MOSES, the notorious New York master builder, wanted to cow the journalists who covered him, he knew he didn’t have to harangue or threaten his way to a favorable story. Food and drink did the trick.
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This practice continues unabated, as made clear in a recent batch of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. The meals may be smaller and the settings less lavish, but the goals remain the same: for a person in a position of power, in this case Hillary Clinton, to groom a friendlier press corps. Non-journalists, as well as conservative outlets, reacted with anger and incredulity at emails—the Clinton campaign has not disputed their validity—that showed the campaign setting up off-the-record dinners and cocktails with John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and Joel Benenson, her chief strategist. (The Huffington Post had reported on the Podesta meeting previously.) Journalists mostly shrugged at the revelations.
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If the reporters understand, implicitly or explicitly, that these events exist solely to advance the agenda of a particular candidate, why show up? Why spend a night in the spin zone over Podesta’s creamy risotto, knowing the campaign is trying to co-opt you? If reporters can document with outrage the ways in which lobbyists fete elected officials, why is the practice okay when reporters are on the receiving end?
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As Caro understood, the best reporting is done on the margins, away from the siren charms of power and prestige. “It is more difficult to challenge a man’s facts over cocktails than over a conference table,” Caro wrote. “More difficult to flatly give the lie to a statement over a gleaming white tablecloth, filet mignon, and fine wine than it would have been to do so over a hard-polished board-room and legal pads.”