Democracy dies in gaslighting
By 
The good news is that someone at the major media outlets have deigned to address the radical change in standards about when hacked emails provided by ratfuckers contain information considered so newsworthy it justifies their publication. The bad news is that the answer is just to flat-out lie and assert that nothing has changed:
2. @washingtonpost Executive Editor Matt Murray defended the decision: "The news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly…— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) September 9, 2024
“Deep breath and paused.” If you scroll way, way down finally get to the beginning of Politico’s blog dedicated solely to the highly uninteresting contents of the Podesta inbox, you’ll see that the first post about the emails that dropped on the evening of October 7 was on the morning of October 10. Here’s the very solemn declaration of what counted as newsworthy:
The messages released so far have provided an unprecedented glimpse into the inner workings of the Clinton camp, and appeared to include excerpts of Clinton’s controversial paid speeches, including those before Wall Street firms.
While there have been no bombshells — especially compared to the tape of Donald Trump cavalierly talking about sexually assaulting women — some emails have proven embarrassing to those in Clinton’s orbit, and the Democratic nominee has had to answer for discrepancies is some public and private opinions on policy issues, including trade.
The justification was that…the emails provided access to the “inner workings” of the Clinton campaign and “have proven embarrassing” to people in “Clinton’s orbit” although there were “no bombshells.” The idea that the new tranche of emails about the “inner workings” of a campaign do not meet the standard of “must provide a glimpse into the inner workings of a campaign” is intelligence-insulting.
Now scroll back up — the sheer volume of stories Politico got from the Podesta inbox is staggering, and they were sure right about the “no bombshells” part. The WaPo wasn’t materially different. And Politico also denies having changed their standards:
4. The steady drumbeat of mostly unflattering articles in the @washingtonpost and other outlets was a major part of the election narrative in the days and weeks before election day. pic.twitter.com/tBs8sbWb5p— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) September 9, 2024
4. The steady drumbeat of mostly unflattering articles in the @washingtonpost and other outlets was a major part of the election narrative in the days and weeks before election day. pic.twitter.com/tBs8sbWb5p— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) September 9, 2024
My own view is that the hacked emails were handled very badly in 2016 — way too many stories were written about inane trivia that accepted the anti-Clinton spin Wikileaks put on the emails uncritically, and not nearly enough about the much more important story of the hacking itself. If the response of major editors was “we screwed up badly in 2016 and needed to apply a different standard going forward” that would be one thing, although the proof would still be in the pudding. Instead, they’re making it clear that 1)they don’t think they did anything wrong in 2016, and 2)the actual standard is “literally anything is newsworthy if there are hacked emails from a Democratic candidate and nothing is newsworthy is there are hacked emails from a Republican candidate.” Not great, Bob!