“Hillary likes ‘Parks and Recreation'”: The media’s breathless email scandal coverage reaches new...

[DonViejo]

“Hillary likes ‘Parks and Recreation'”: The media’s breathless email scandal coverage reaches new nadir

A week's worth of digging into her personal email reveals less than nothing. How much longer will this go on?

ERIC BOEHLERT, MEDIA MATTERS

Hillary Clinton likes to watch Parks and Recreation.

That’s what the Clinton email kerfuffle seemed to amount to this week. News organizations excitedly dove into the latest trove of emails released from Clinton’s time as secretary of state, only to have to settle for vacuous nuggets about her TV viewing habits.

We seem to be at the stage where the mere existence of publicly-available Clinton emails prompts journalists to hype each additional set as big news, even when the contents of the emails are non-descript. Hard-wired into the Republican way of thinking, the Beltway press often automatically treats Clinton’s electronic communications as damning and suspect. But they’re not.

We’ve seen this pattern repeated numerous times in recent days, and not just with the latest, monthly release of Clinton’s State Department emails. Last week, news outlets including CNN, Washington Post, and ABC News dutifully typed up reports about emails obtained by the Clinton-bashing group Citizens United, which filed lawsuits for the release of Hillary Clinton’s communications. Presented as containing some damning revelations, upon closer examination the emails simply produced more yawns. They contained nothing proving any kind of wrongdoing on the part of Clinton. (Unless Clinton aide Huma Abedin using emails to organize a small dinner for the former secretary of state now qualifies as wrongdoing.)

Ordinarily, I might chalk up this oddly breathless coverage about ho-hum emails to the summer doldrums, as journalists are hard-pressed to create compelling content during the traditionally slow news month of August. But the Beltway press did the exact same thing with the previous email release. And I suspect we’ll see this pattern continue for months to come, in part because a U.S. District court has decreed that the email dumps are going to be monthly events through January.

There have now been three enormous batches of State Department emails released, totaling more than 10,000 pages, and none of them have produced blockbuster revelations or truly fueled the so-called Clinton email scandal.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/04/hillary_likes_parks_and_recreation_the_medias_breathless_email_scandal_coverage_reaches_new_nadir/

[still_one]

1. Another reason I don't waste my time watching TV so-called news

[SouthernProgressive]

2. The Gowdy crowd is costing taxpayers millions of dollars for this crap.

And I have seen many progressives carrying his water for him. This is what Benghazi had brought us to. P&R is pretty funny. Love the guy playing the conservative.

[oasis]

3. I have no doubt that Hillary is up for the task ahead.

[Metric System]

4. It's Howdy Gowdy Time!