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When Did Reading Stop Being a Pre-requisite to Report the News?
From Maggie Williams' statement regarding the "booting" of Mark Penn from the Clinton campaign
After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.
Yet to hear cable news, and to read the blogs, it makes it seem like Mark Penn was fired or "given the boot" or "sacked" by the campaign. I'm a little confused as to how they reached that conclusion because all you have to do is READ to know he's still very much with the campaign.
It says so in the very statement that was released to announce his departure. Not only is he doing polling, but he's still "providing advice".
Now, correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't that his job description before Columbia-gate?
Yet, of all the cable news talking heads I've watched this morning, NONE of them read anything past the headline part of the story. Because if they did, they might ask a few questions about Mark Penn's continuing role in the campaign.
It may just be me, but when someone gets fired, it means they no longer are working for whomever fired them. Mark Penn is not only still working for the Clinton campaign, but he's doing the exact same job he always has been doing for them.
Which is fine to me, I don't really care if Mark Penn has a job or not. Just don't release a statement for damage control stating he's been "fired" or "released" or "resigned" or whatever when he really hasn't. That's patently dishonest.
Dishonesty from the Clinton camp? I'm shocked.
And the media should call them on it. Of course, i know they won't as that would require reading and comprehension skills. That's a skill set that our mainstream media is apparently lacking.
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Comments (15)
Of course, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised at the laziness of the msm. After all, they think Obama's bowling skills are more important that the president's lawyer authorizing tortue.
April 7, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The real facts and the MSM facts rarely match up. I don't think we put enough pressure on the MSM to get things right. If we could put enough pressure on Congress to rethink telecom immunity, why can't we get the MSM to report facts?
Until they feel it's in their best interest to get their act together, they won't.
Anyone have any thoughts on what would get the MSM to take notice?
April 7, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the real problem is the 24/7 cycle. There's less attention to substance and "filler" stuff has more influence because they have a lot of time to kill on cable news.
The frustrating thing is that in the "echo chamber" environment that is cable news, what gets said gets taken as true because its said over and over and over and over again, often times off the same news sheet. So it's vitally important that what gets said is TRUE so that we dont have false hoods and lies becoming truth.
Unfortunatly, for reasons unknown to me, fact checking hardly ever gets done and headlines are about as far as "reporters" ever take it.
April 7, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please don't take this as me issuing a defense of the media, but:
This is a chicken-egg situation...
In this case, the "reports" that Penn was "fired" existed before the Maggie Williams statement. I suspectthe timing on that was entirely intentional as was the Friday/King's Assassination Anniversary release of the tax documents. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's good politics as three-card monty game...
April 7, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
More evidence Penn wasn't really "fired":
Demoted Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn may no longer have the coveted title of chief strategist, but he remains a key member of the campaign's senior staff. Indeed, it is not clear precisely what Mr. Penn's demotion entails, other than a public rebuke.
Mr. Penn took part on the campaign's morning message call this morning, as usual.
This afternoon, he is also scheduled to be on a call with Clinton and other aides to begin to prepare for Saturday's presidential debate in Philadelphia.
Mr. Penn "is still going to be very much involved," a senior campaign official said.Marc Ambinder
I won't be holding my breath to see if the media picks up on this.
April 7, 2008 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
It could be she's afraid to fire him outright, afraid of what he might say. This is so strange it could be as simple as that.
April 7, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it in HRC's interest to portray that she fired the most inept worker on her campaign, especially after he publicly contradicted her foreign policy so blatantly for business reasons.
If I was supporting her, I'd want her to look authoratative here and swiftly and ruthlessly cut him off...
April 7, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
as of 4:38pm msnbc is still reporting that Mark Penn is no longer with the campaign...even tho he is.
the state of "journalism" in this country makes me embarrassed.
April 7, 2008 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I watched Morning Joe today for the first and last time. They must have said TEN times that the Penn "dust-up" this weekend just wasn't much of a story. They were far more interested in HRC's unvetted (& untrue) stump story regarding a poor woman who died.
Both of these items are important - don't get me wrong - but they completely blew off the Penn story. Repeatedly.
April 7, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't really know the details of Mr. Penn's previous contract, but it appears from the snippet that you clipped that he's no longer going to an employee of the campaign, while his company will remain as a consultant.
To me that makes sense; It's been portrayed as the dude will not be running the day-to-day show, but I'm sure his company has many more employees and that they have an infrastructure in place, who is used to doing work for the campaign.
This Penn fellow may or may not be called on for advice, he knows the players and the landscape, but he's not going to be making final decisions and the people down in polling are going to keep doing their jobs.
April 8, 2008 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
except they go out of their way to mention that penn himself will stay on:
"Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign."
I don't think the clintons ever intended to imply that they "fired" him or that he was no longer going to be a part of the campaign at all.
But the media somehow got it into their collective minds that he was "fired". I don't know if they were dumbing it down for us, thinking we wouldnt be able to comprehend a loss of title (which is basically all that happened to him), or if they were just lazy, or incompetent, or if they were more sinister motivations.
I don't know. But the truth isn't hard to find. Cable news shouldn't be used to distort it.
April 8, 2008 1:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
The media, especially cable are a bunch of sheep with their heads buried up their asses. I've got a story that I sometimes tell about them dropping the ball before Iraq, but that's obviously offtopic for your post.
Instead, though it's still somewhat offtopic and by mentioning it, I could be driving some people into a wild frenzy, but I made a similar notation in a post that I recently wrote about the Rev. Wright issue.
In a nutshell: Greg Sargent did an interview with Harold Ickes, where Ickes said that the subject of Rev. Wright sometimes comes up in his discussions with superdelegates.
The next day, Josh noted that Mr. Ickes didn't say who brings the subject of the Rev into the conversation and the gist of the portion of my post, which is applicable to this type of situation was that I'm sure the topic is also coming-up in conversation with Obama people. After all, if Mr. Ickes were drunk-dialing superdelegates and shouting the name, I'm sure somebody would've said something by now. I mean, Bill Clinton can't even turn a little red in the face without it becoming national news.
Nonetheless, if you watch Josh's compilation of talking heads hawking the story, you can see that it obviously became something much larger than a dude honestly answering a question for a blogsite.
April 8, 2008 2:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
HRC did nothing more than re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.... Penn doomed HRC's candidacy and continues to doom her candidacy.... all of this raises the question of her judgement to be associated with such a brain-dead asshole.
April 8, 2008 4:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's all about the ratings, folks. Most of the anchors are on a par with those "members of the press corps" who interview starlets on the red carpet. And I found once I made that mental adjustment, rather than compare them to, oh let's say the largely anonymous men and women who are out on war zones actually collecting the news, my blood pressure went down. The anchors are selected for their incisive journalistic ability to look pretty on camera.
April 8, 2008 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
To quote Halperin ...
She can't say -- the impression I got from her and again from talking to others around her -- she can't say anything like, anything more than just a small fraction of the case she'd like to make, because some of it's too sensitive.
Hillary wants Penn gone. That she can't just be rid of him, is, sadly, just another one of those burdens she bears on our behalf.
April 8, 2008 8:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
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