Most news outlets are crediting Mother Jones for the film’s release. HuffPo, MoJo duel for video credit

When historians write the book on the 2012 campaign, they will surely include the leaked video showing Mitt Romney telling wealthy donors at a private May fundraiser that he can’t count on the support of “47 percent” of the electorate who “believe that they are victims.”

The question is: Who will get the credit for the scoop?


Most news outlets, including POLITICO, are crediting Mother Jones, the liberal politics magazine, for the film’s release. Journalist David Corn, who had been working with the leaker for weeks, was given exclusive access to the entire video, which Mother Jones published in part on Monday and in full on Tuesday afternoon.

But the damaging clip — in which Romney said “there are 47 percent who are with [President Barack Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims” — had been floating around the Internet for many weeks. And on Monday afternoon, the Huffington Post was the first news outlet to publish a verified version of the clip, with a splash across the homepage that read, “Romney Leak: Obama Voters ‘Dependent on Government.”

Huffington Post decided to run the story and clip on Monday night only because, after repeated requests to the source behind the video, it learned that Mother Jones had an exclusive hold on the full-length film.

“I rushed it up because the guy that did the video let me know David Corn had it,” Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, told POLITICO.

“I emailed David and he didn’t reply immediately. If you know David, you know that he’s quick on email. When he didn’t instantly reply, I knew this guy was telling the truth, and I started scrambling to move quicker,” Grim said.

The Huffington Post had actually uploaded the video into its player on Sept. 3, where it floated around the website (and even showed up on The Huffington Post Parents player) to little consequence. Meanwhile, an operations manager at Huffington Post named Brad Shannon was pleading with the source of the video for access to the full footage.

“Brad is incredibly web-savvy. He spoke the same language as the source,” Grim said. “We were emailing with him. He said, ‘I might get fired, I don’t want to get sued, I don’t want to go to jail.’ We were working with our lawyers here to get him advice — because he kept saying ‘I have this full-length, high-definition, high-quality video; I just need to feel protected’.”

“Our take was it was better to get the whole video than to go with a half-scoop,” Grim continued. “Then, when he let us know that we had lost, that he decided to give it to Corn, we rushed up the piece with what we had.”

Forty-five minutes after the Huffington Post published its story on Monday night, with that full-page splash on the homepage, Mother Jones published its own version of the clip. The Mother Jones version, coming from the full video, was higher quality and featured no black-outs.

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“Nobody had the full video except me. Nobody had it,” David Corn told POLITICO. “What the Huffington Post posted came from YouTube clips the source had put up, with blacked out images. It was mainly audio, really dark and grainy with words over it.”

“David started chasing after this source back in May, he’d been cultivating this source for months. It’s not like Huffington Post was on it and then the source said, ‘Oh, no, I want to give it to David,” said Clara Jeffery, co-editor of Mother Jones. “It’s our story. We got it, we verified it.”

Indeed, Corn had been pursuing the story since May, shortly after Romney’s fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., took place. Corn had been reporting on Romney’s investments, and became familiar with a different clip from the fundraiser through James Carter IV, the grandson of President Jimmy Carter. Carter then set about contacting the source, and passed his information along to Corn.

“James seemed capable of getting through the layers,” Corn said. “He started tweeting, emailing with the source, and asked the person if he would talk to me. We started by private tweets, then moved to emails, then phone calls. It was a long process — I had to become comfortable with the source, and he had to know that we would protect his confidentiality.”

The legality of the recording has come into question, as Florida law requires consent from both the person recording and the person being recorded when one of the parties has a reasonable expectation of privacy, according to legal experts who spoke to POLITICO earlier today. Though that provision may not extend to fundraisers, as they are part of a public campaign.

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Corn would not characterize his source, but did say the source claimed no affiliation with either campaign.

“The source told me — I had no reason not to believe him — that he’s not affiliated with any campaign,” Corn continued. “He said he had not gone to the fundraiser looking to nab Mitt Romney. He was there more out of curiosity. He wanted to know what Romney was going to say.”

Corn said the source sent him the full video on Sept. 11. But Corn and Mother Jones spent almost a full week vetting it in order to ensure that it was credible.

“We took a very long, very hard look at it. There is always a one percent chance that there could be a Dr. Evil who was an expert and could fabricate the film, so we had to be absolutely sure,” Corn said.

Mother Jones’s hand was finally forced after The Huffington Post decided to run its own version of the clip.

“I know that the Huffington Post kept pleading with the source to give them the full video, and that didn’t happen,” Corn said. “To the source’s credit, the source agreed to let me have the exclusive, even though the Huffington Post kept asking and asking.”

The result is that while Huffington Post can claim first, it is very likely that Mother Jones will claim history — a coup for the old media in a new-media age where a major premium is put on breaking news first. The magazine, which has a print circulation of just over 200,000, received almost 2 million page-views on its website Monday afternoon.

“We had it first: We led with the ‘47 percent’ quote, we had the story. But ultimately, we wanted to be first and we wanted to have the whole video,” Grim told POLITICO. “Having the whole video is more important. There’s just no way I can sugar coat that.”

“This was not a fly-by-night project — just get it and put it up,” Corn said. “In the Internet age, everything is Now! Now! Now! But we were very deliberate in terms of editing, putting it in context, trying to do this right. And the fact that I have been doing investigative reporting on this front, serious reporting on this front, that impressed the source. He thought I was qualified to handle this story. He knew I could be trusted.”

Grim admitted to being troubled by the fact that Mother Jones would likely be remembered for breaking the story.

“I am concerned, a little bit. I love their magazine, I love what they do. I have a huge respect for David, so I’m glad to see him get the full video,” Grim said. “But I do hope that people do recognize we had it first, and that we identified the key part of Romney’s remarks.”

“We spotted it, we verified it, we wrote it, we broke it,” he said. “That accounts for something in this world.”