Media’s greatest fear is that the election could turn out to be a referendum on the media.

Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and at the time DNC Vice Chair (now Chair), was caught through the Wikileaks Podesta email dump feeding to Hillary’s campaign a question to be used at a CNN presidential town hall.

We covered the story previously, Brazile Gave Hillary Campaign Town Hall Question in Advance:

The Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta emails shows that then-CNN contributor, now DNC interim chair, Donna Brazile gave Hillary a question ahead of a CNN town hall. Brazile sent this email to Podesta and a few aides, with the subject “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”

While Brazile tried to obfuscate with general denials, the evidence was pretty damning:

This should be a huge media issue. Maybe the biggest issue.

What is more corrupting of the process than a CNN contributor and Clinton supporter feeding a question to her favored candidate?

This was a rigging of the town hall, but the mainstream media couldn’t care less. There is little outrage, few if any calls for Brazile to be fired from both positions, and a burying of the issue.

Jake Tapper is an exception, as IJ Review reports, ‘Horrified’ Jake Tapper Responds to WikiLeaks Emails That Expose Donna Brazile as Clinton Mole:

CNN’s Jake Tapper spoke to WMAL’s Larry O’Connor and Brian Wilson about his former colleague: “It’s a very, very troubling… look, I have tremendous regard for Donna Brazile. She’s a good person and a nice person and I like her a lot but whatever took place here… and I know I had nothing to do with it… and I know CNN, we were so closely guarding our documents… they weren’t emailed around. My understanding is the email to Donna came from either Roland Martin or someone around Roland Martin.” Tapper also responded to the fact that questions were apparently leaked to the campaign. He confirmed that, at the town hall hosted by himself and Roland Martin, Hillary was asked a question that matched the one forwarded to her by Brazile almost word for word.: It’s horrifying. Journalistically it’s horrifying and I’m sure it will have an impact on partnering with this organization in the future and I’m sure it will have and effect on… Donna Brazile is no longer with CNN because she’s with the DNC right now, but I’m sure it will have some impact on Donna Brazille. People at CNN take this very, very seriously and to have somebody who does not take it seriously and to have us partner with that person and then they do something completely unethical and share it with Donna Brazile who then shares it with the Clinton campaign… it’s horrifying and very, very upsetting and I can’t condemn it any more than… I condemn it in no uncertain terms, it’s awful.”

Yet who else among the media is speaking out about the Brazile story? When they are, it’s typical of what CNN’s Brian Stelter writes, that the Wikileaks revelations as to the media are no big deal and paranoia:

In Trump’s world, journalists are really just Hillary Clinton campaign workers in disguise, collaborating with Clinton in a conspiracy to “rig” the election.

This is a marked change from past Republican complaints about the press. In fact, he is doing much more than alleging a lack of objectivity. “Instead of talking about favoritism among journalists toward a candidate or cause, Trump is making a more extreme claim: doing politics and doing journalism are the same thing,” journalism professor Jay Rosen told CNNMoney. “In this way of thinking, ‘the media’ and ‘the left’ have an equal sign between them.” …. In recent days, Trump has cited a stolen cache of documents published by Wikileaks to claim that “the media collaborates” with Clinton.

But the documents show only isolated examples of questionable journalistic behavior — not the systemic fraud he alleges…. Accusations of bias are as old as the craft itself. Media watchdogs on the left and the right seek to hold journalists accountable. But Trump’s accusations are different. They suggest he sees no difference between the practice of journalism and the practice of politics. Trump is reflecting a growing view on the right that journalists are nothing more than “Democratic operatives with bylines,” as conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds likes to say.

Burying the Brazile revelation is part of a pattern of the mainstream media burying Wikileaks documents that expose collusion between the Clinton campaign and the media. We covered several such instances from the latest rounds of disclosures:

.@washingtonpost WH bureau chief @eilperin tips off Podesta abt upcoming story — this is y ppl don't trust media https://t.co/clU6I5pQKd pic.twitter.com/a1jColKu5e — Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 14, 2016

Wikileaks: Team Hillary planned to work w State Dept and AP to deploy Hillary spin on unproduced Blumenthal emails https://t.co/YBsezLayQ0 pic.twitter.com/VcEBQfWvp7 — Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 15, 2016

For a media claiming Donald Trump is threatening democracy by claiming the election is rigged by a corrupt media, the Wikileaks revelations are uncomfortable evidence. So it must be ignored, as Joe Concha points out at The Hill, Trump has a point with media criticism:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has gone thermonuclear on the media in a way we’ve never seen from any political figure — or any public figure — before…. Reaction to Trump’s critique of the media by many left-leaning media members and advocates was about what one would expect, referring to it as dangerous and dark and totalitarian and conspiratorial and just about every other word from the 2016 Hyperbole Style Guide. Those conclusions, of course, are just air without any real foundation in terms of numbers or data to support it. Speaking of data, try this on for size: In viewing recordings by The Hill of each major network’s evening newscasts, which are watched by an average total of 22 million to 24 million people nightly, the newest batch of WikiLeaks revelations was covered for a combined 57 seconds out of 66 minutes of total air time on ABC, NBC and CBS. Those leaked emails include derogatory comments about Catholics by senior Clinton campaign officials and more disturbing examples of collusion between the media and her campaign It’s newsworthy stuff) — On the other hand, allegations from four women of unwanted sexual advances by Trump were covered a combined 23 minutes. Add it all up, and one presidential candidate’s negative news of the day was somehow covered more than 23 times more than another candidate’s negative news of the day.

Media Research Center confirms the major network blackout on Wikileaks in general and media collusion in particular:

From Friday evening to Thursday morning, the morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC dedicated 4 hours and 13 minutes to discussing the recent allegations of sexual misconduct surrounding Donald Trump’s campaign. Meanwhile, not only has the continual release of the WikiLeaks emails from top Hillary staff gotten a comparatively puny 36 minutes of coverage during this same time period, the coverage that is there continues to ignore specifics that could be damaging to Hillary. Still completely absent from the network coverage? Any mention of the emails where journalists collaborated with the Clinton campaign.

The media is burying these stories because it confirms their greatest fear, that the election could turn out to be a referendum on the media.



