#us press corps

[toshootforthestars]

Here's A Roundup Of News People Tried to Bury Over Thanksgiving

This year, there were some doozies. I’ll try to put as many as I can into this blog, but sound off in the comments if there’s something else you saw slipped under the Turkey-table.

From the report by Jack Crosbie, posted 23 Nov 2018:

The U.S. National Climate Assessment went public.

Bill Shine, former co-president of Fox News Channel and current Comms Director for the Trump administration, is getting paid millions of dollars by Fox as part of a severance package, while still working in the White House.

Two nonprofit organizations owned by the Koch Brothers are funding the vast majority of the Daily Caller News Foundation and several other pro-Trump right wing media organizations.

Facebook admits that it asked the Definers PR shop to go after George Soros after the billionaire was critical of them. The company also found a fall guy, outgoing head of communications and policy Elliot Schrage, to take the blame for the pretty fucked up stuff that it was doing throughout the past year.

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee Subpoenaed James Comey and Loretta Lynch on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, asking the former FBI Director and Attorney General (respectively) to come in for private interviews in early December, to talk about Hillary Clinton’s email server (everlasting sigh).

Speaking of email servers, a White House review found that Ivanka Trump used a private email account to conduct government business up to 100 times and many more to coordinate scheduling...

[tzikeh]

Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps

She learned from Biden’s fatal error.

This is a terrific essay.

[T]he Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. In effect, she’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and, as a consequence, she’s preventing it from exercising a de facto veto on her speech. In that, she is taking power – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s.  ... This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who crave attention. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs. ... There are no rules. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong. This is really important and I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her moral and democratic obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency.

[toshootforthestars]