Politico ‘Hack’ Asked Clinton Campaign Chairman To Fact-Check His Work

If you’re still having trouble buying the entire “the media is corrupt” narrative, maybe this will help swing you over to our side.

According to an email found in the batch of Podesta documents dumped by WikiLeaks, senior Politico reporter Glenn Thrush sent his work to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta ahead of publication. You know. So he could “fact-check” it and let him know if there was anything that made Hillary look bad there were any errors.

Podesta said he saw “no problem here.”

Stamp of approval from the Clinton campaign. Yay!

However, Thrush claims he does this all of the time. It’s totally not a big deal, so if you could all chill out ASAP, that’d be great.

Little unnerving — but fascinating to be in the middle of a ginned-up, self-serving shit-storm pushed by fake, in-the-bag partisan media.

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) October 17, 2016

Seriously. He doesn’t have to answer to you! It’s not HIS fault you idiotic “everyday Americans” and conservative bloggers are incapable of understanding how journalism works.

@GlennThrush stick to your guns. not your fault they don’t know how either journalism or politics works.

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) October 17, 2016

My goal in emailing Podesta: TO GET HIM TO CONFIRM STUFF I HAD FROM LESSER SOURCES. It worked. Nobody controls my stories but me. Troll on!

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) October 17, 2016

@DonderolibtR By implicated you mean checking if a portion of a story that pertained to him was accurate… I DO THIS WITH EVERYBODY

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) October 17, 2016

So, sending members of the Clinton campaign sections of articles word for word is par for the course? Why didn’t Thrush just send Podesta a series of questions instead of the actual content of the article? If his practice is “so common,” why did he write, “Please don’t share or tell anybody I did this”?

The Hill’s Joe Concha breaks this down beautifully:

The story will likely drift away since other media reporters are ignoring it. The easy question here is this: If a reporter was caught sharing advance copies of stories with Kellyanne Conway or Steve Bannon in an effort to fact-check, do you think the coverage would be 20 or 30 times as great as this story is receiving?

 

Glenn Thrush attempted to fact-check a complex story. That’s a common practice by reporters far and wide and shouldn’t be condemned out of hand.

 

But the fact-check should have never included text from the story itself.

 

Thrush knows this by his own admission when he asks Podesta not to share or tell anyone he was doing it.

 

And Thrush being able to illustrate anger and defiance on social media shows management advocates what was done here, because the reporter isn’t acting like someone who got a stern talk from management.

Unsurprisingly, Politico’s sticking by Thrush. They say his unusual request– you know, asking Podesta not to tell anyone PLEASE OMG PLEASE DON’T TELL– is all part of his “self-deprecating sense of humor.” If you don’t get it, that’s on you. That’s your problem. It’s not their fault you don’t understand good humor.

Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring provided this statement to the Daily Caller:

Glenn has a self-deprecating sense of humor, one of the many blessings of being born and raised in Brooklyn. You know Alex, Oscar Wilde once pointed out that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously. That wisdom seems to apply here.

 

The bottom line is that Glenn got the chairman of the notoriously secretive Clinton campaign – who is not typically a font of detail – to confirm a bunch of inside information that he culled from other sources. I can speak with firsthand knowledge and experience that Glenn does this with everybody, on both sides of the aisle. Glenn is one of the top political reporters in the country, in no small part because he understands that it is his job is to get inside information, not appear perfect when someone illegally hacks emails.

 

Curiously, since you’ve referred to Glenn as a “fucking joke” on social media, one has to wonder whether you might be approaching this line of questioning with your own biases. Is it standard practice at the Daily Caller to assign reporters to cover subjects whom they’ve described in such a manner?

Interesting that Politico’s excuse is always something along the lines of “You people are too stupid to understand good humor” or “you people are too stupid to understand how journalism works” or “you people are too stupid to understand how Washington works.”

Liberals laugh at us when we talk about the “corrupt media,” but this is just one of many examples that we know of.

John Harwood, a CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent and a New York Times contributor is caught advising the Clinton campaign on multiple occasions. No apology from Harwood. No reprimand from CNBC or the Times.

Donna Brazile, a former CNN political analyst, is caught giving a Town Hall question in advance to the Clinton campaign while an employee of the network. Brazile writes she’s received questions in advance before. CNN has refused to allow an internal investigation by an outside firm to determine just how many other Town Halls and debates may have been impacted. No apology from Brazile. No apology from CNN on Brazile’s behalf, just a statement that, “We have never, ever given a town hall question to anyone beforehand.”

 

Mark Leibovich, a senior reporter for the New York Times, is caught engaging in quote approval with the Clinton campaign. No apology. No reprimand. This is what the Times said in 2012 about quote approval. And what they said earlier this year about sharing of advance copies of stories.

But we’re supposed to believe that Thrush is a genius who exudes journalistic integrity. We’re just a bunch of inbred hayseeds who are incapable of understanding the complexity of his job.