Interesting: "Wall Street Journal Creating False Drama Between Hillary and Bernie" (Hillary Group) [View all]

[DeepModem Mom]

As a liberal, I’m somewhat torn between being grateful for any attention that’s being paid to the Democratic presidential race, and dismay at the form that attention is taking. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton‘s campaign took a hard shot back at Bernie Sanders over reports that he is “taking the gloves off” with regard to her email server, firing back with this statement:

“This has and will remain a campaign about issues for Hillary Clinton, and that’s what she’ll continue to talk about on the trail. It’s disappointing Senator Sanders and his campaign strategists have chosen to change direction and engage in the type of personal attacks that they previously said he wouldn’t do.”

Here’s the problem: Bernie Sanders hasn’t taken off any gloves, and didn’t attack Hillary at all. Her campaign could be forgiven for thinking he did, though, based on the Wall Street Journal headline Bernie Sanders Takes Gloves Off Against Hillary Clinton in Interview, and the fact that the story was shopped to the Clinton camp by the WSJ, and by a reporter who made the mistake of believing that headline.

Of course, Greg Sargent can be forgiven for believing that headline, given the way the WSJ massaged that interview, and the way almost the entire political media fell for it.

You should always, however, be wary of an interview whose hottest news peg relies on a paraphrase. In this case, the notion that Sanders is changing his tune on the emails is entirely the creation of the reporters (emphasis mine)....

Until WSJ releases transcripts or audio of the interview, I can only surmise, but based on the extensive paraphrasing, I’d guess that Sanders was probably asked a narrow question about the FBI security audit, designed to elicit the slight “valid questions” quote. Then, they repackaged it as a rejection of the broader premise that the emails shouldn’t be a huge political issue....

Unfortunately, none of this has stopped the rest of the media from characterizing this in the same way that the Journal did, and now that Hillary’s campaign has swung back, it’s legitimately news, I guess. That was an unforced error by her spokesman, who should have thought twice about making news on a subject that the candidate had pretty clearly turned a page on, and for what? Maybe taking a chip out of a candidate whom Hillary is now beating by more than 30 points?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/wall-street-journal-creating-false-drama-between-hillary-and-bernie/ via Mediaite