> However there are documented instances, with Politico for instance where stories were given prior approval by the Clinton campaign before publishing.

Since you don't say which instance you are talking about, I assume you are talking about this email [1]. Which is kind of curious because it resulted in one of the most negative articles about Clinton in the primaries [2] and widely shared among Bernie and Trump supporters to attack Clinton and now this is supposed to be example of Politico being in bed with Trump? It seems more like Vogel gave the Clinton camp to comment on it.

> I went to journalism school and giving sources prior-review over a story is about as unethical as it gets.

Is it? Even our local paper gave us the chance to comment prior to publishing an article about the little company I am working at.

[1]https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/10808 [2]http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-le...

>Even our local paper gave us the chance to comment prior to publishing an article about the little company I am working at.

Oh that is why you are defending the shitty aspect of journalism. There is a difference between handling all of the story and asking for a comment. Asking for a comment is a normal journalism practice and handling the whole story is the shitty nepotism. It is amazing you are defending this aspect of journalism. Handing over whole story before publishing it. It helps the campaign to plan mitigation efforts, and even can do to editor to edit out the story due to Clinton campaign pushback.

Here is the thing. The email exchange with Politico actually proves to me that the Clinton campaign has a lot less influence over the press than people assume. Politico sent an article that is very critical of Clinton to her campaign. They were trying to push back. Then Politico published the article anyway. If the Clinton campaign had any influence over Politico they would've been able to stop the article. You have to see the context. This was THE big critical story about Clinton during the primaries (besides the millions articles about emails) and I couldn't find anything essential that the Clinton campaign was able to prevent from publishing.

That's an interesting spin. Ignore the fact that Politico gave a candidate a "head's up" about a damaging piece and be happy that at least they still published it despite push back. It's less terrible than you thought it was!

There is nothing illegal (or even unethical in my opinion) to give someone an article before publishing so they can comment on it. It's ridiculous to infer collusion when the result is such a negative article about Clinton. Which piece of information did not make it into the article because it was first send to Paustenbach? Please be specific.

I didn't say it was illegal. I do think it is unethical. It's what we call in legal world an ex parte communication. It's an off-the-record communication with the subject of the article. At the very least, it gives the subject advance warning to spin or do damage control in response--a courtesy I suspect is not granted to everyone.

> a courtesy I suspect is not granted to everyone.

It's worth pointing out that since we don't have a dump of the Bernie emails, we don't know what their press interaction was like. I'd be shocked if they did not participate in this article. They certainly pushed it pretty hard once it published.

>-a courtesy I suspect is not granted to everyone.

It is standard practice in every bit of journalism I've ever seen to ask the subject for comment.

> email scandal

On this topic, I find it mildly amusing that, for all the accusations of bias, it was actually the New York Times that broke the story of Clinton's private email server.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clinto...

Some reporters can break stories too, and the same newspaper can have cronies too.

There is a good email in wikileaks where Jake Tapper is pushing back against a slanderous story published against him. Made me respect him for that. There is also another one, where a buzzfeed reporter is introducing a collegue cordially and professionally.

It would be a strange newspaper business indeed that sat quietly on a story like that.

> However there are documented instances, with Politico for instance where stories were given prior approval by the Clinton campaign before publishing.

Did they show the story to get 'approval' or did they check elements of the story before publication?

The latter. Vogel was about to publish a piece of investigative journalism on the Hillary Victory Fund (one that the Sanders camp celebrated at the time). He asked the Clinton team for their explanation and sent a preprint to make sure he didn't misrepresent it in any way, which would have damaged his piece if it were immediately followed by the Clinton camp saying he was wrong and that they had told him why but he hadn't printed it. ttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/07/25/lay-off-politicos-ken-vogel/

If you get all of an organization's emails, you are bound to find an email that looks like some conspiracy on the surface. The people who think this email is an issue are simply not inclined to challenge their biases, so they display their ignorance proudly.