Reminder: The NYT’s Top Two Political Reporters Are Basically Democratic Operatives
23rd February 2017
“We have has a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year,” a memo titled “Earned Media/Next Steps” written by the Clinton communications team said. “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. While we should have a larger conversation in the near future about a broader strategy for reengaging the beat press that covers HRC, for this we think we can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie.”
Haberman is now a star politics reporter at The New York Times, along with Glenn Thrush, another former Politico reporter who the Wikileaks dump revealed was sending stories to the Clinton campaign for approval. Thrush jokingly described himself as a “hack” for the campaign in an email to John Podesta in which he agreed to send part of his story for approval before publishing.
“No worries Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,” Thrush wrote to the Clinton campaign chairman in an April 2015 email. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I fucked up anything.”
The emails showing Thrush and Haberman’s tight relationship with the Clinton campaign were just a few of the many emails that revealed a pervasive culture among political media elites in which journalists operate more like political operatives than enterprising reporters.