After the New York Times released an article Monday morning regarding the ongoing Hillary Clinton personal email ‘scandal,’ both Media Matters and Fox News went after the paper and the piece’s author for relying solely on anonymous sources and not having actually read any of the emails. Monday’s article was a follow-up to Schmidt’s earlier ‘bombshell’ story where it was first revealed that Clinton used a private email account during her tenure as Secretary of State. Political pundits and politicians on Capitol Hill have latched onto the story to try to discredit Clinton ahead of the 2016 election.
In the latest article, Schmidt provides a detailed account of the content of roughly 300 emails that Clinton had turned over to the latest Benghazi House investigative committee. However, one paragraph in the article reveals that neither Schmidt or anyone at the NYT has actually seen any of the emails in question and the article was based purely on information provided from leaks.
The emails have not been made public, and The New York Times was not permitted to review them. But four senior government officials offered descriptions of some of the key messages, on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to secret information.
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In response to the article, Fox host Greta Van Susteren took to her blog to complain about the Times’ complete reliance on anonymous sources in regards to this story.
Can’t the NY Times do better than this? No named sources and they didn’t see the emails themselves and we are suppose to accept this as the facts?[…] This is what is wrong with journalism — American people are fed what amounts to as gossip and the NYT is happy to feed it. In the old days, journalists would have worked the stories longer (there is no rush to get this published) and harder and either the journalists would have seen the emails themselves or gotten us names of those who supposedly were telling the content.[…]Anonymous sources should be used rarely, not routinely and in this instance, the reporter has not even seen the emails himself but expects us all to accept this as fact.
Now, considering Van Susteren works for Fox News, one would think that perhaps she shouldn’t be overly critical considering her own network’s issues with ‘truthiness’ and taking gossip or unsubstantiated reporting as fact. Having said that, she has a point. The Times has relied on a lot of hearsay and fuzzy reporting regarding this story. It appears they are giving Schmidt a lot of leeway these past few weeks because the story itself is juicy and it brings a lot of attention due to Clinton being attached. On top of that, the story can now provide further comment in terms of opinion and commentary pieces. (Hello, Maureen Dowd!)
In a pairing of odd bedfellows, Van Susteren was joined in her criticism of the Times by Media Matters‘ Eric Boehlert. The senior fellow at the media watchdog group took to Twitter to slam the Times for its sourcing.
ha. NYT reporter hasn’t y’know actually read Hillary’s Benghazi emails. (hint: ask Jonathan Karl how that works out) http://t.co/XV7Y30VE4l
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) March 23, 2015
He even gave a little tip of the hat to Van Susteren for her blog post.
yikes, even @greta slams NYT sourcing on Hillary email story: “this is what is wrong with journalism”; http://t.co/xawUkToQgR
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) March 23, 2015
Other political journalists, such as Politico’s Glenn Thrush, also took the paper to task for its reliance on leaks, anonymous sources and second-hand information as the sole basis of this story. Meanwhile, it doesn’t appear that the personal email non-controversy is gaining any real traction. A recent poll by CNN shows that Clinton leads all potential GOP opponents in the 2016 White House race by double-digits.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
