The recent DNC Wikileaks hack has confirmed some of the worst fears of Bernie Sanders supporters. It has shown that top Democrats never actually considered Sanders a viable threat to Hillary Clinton, that they devised undemocratic ways to derail and sabotage his campaign, planted pro-Clinton aides in Bernie’s campaign to corrode it from the inside, and even planned which donors and prominent fundraisers to provide with appointments to federal boards and commissions once Clinton was elected president of the United States.
The revelations have seriously undermined DNC’s accountability, alienating an already disillusioned group of progressive voters further away from Clinton. The DNC, on its part, has attempted to come clean by letting its deeply-biased chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, take the fall, but the fact remains that no amount reparation can undo the damage that has already been unleashed on the American democracy.
Even more alarming is another facet of the DNC Wikileaks hack that, unlike other aspects pertaining to the leak, has been deliberately overlooked by sections of the mainstream media. Some of the emails that were exchanged between top democrats at the DNC, apart from proving that it actively and constantly derailed Sanders campaign, also show how the American mainstream media colluded with the DNC not only to build an anti-Sanders narrative, but practically help Clinton clinch the nomination.
#DNCLeak shows: ??Collusion between DNC & media ??Plotting to smear Sanders ??Questionable fundraising for HRC & DNC https://t.co/lwmp64KwuS
— Dr. Jill Stein? (@DrJillStein) July 22, 2016
As reported by Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy, Kenneth Vogel, an influential reporter at Politico, made an “agreement” with the DNC to let them review a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising machine before it was submitted to his editors.
In an email Vogel sent to DNC national press secretary Mark Paustenbach in late April with the subject line “per agreement… any thoughts appreciated,” he asked Paustenbach to review the story and get back to him with feedback. Apparently, Vogel had sent the advance copy of the story on one condition — that it shouldn’t be shared with anyone else.
But, of course, Vogel was too naive to assume that Paustenbach would actually pay heed to his suggestion. Sure enough, DNC’s press secretary forwarded the story to Luis Miranda, the DNC’s communications director, asking him not to share the copy any further.
This is not only an example of mainstream media’s collusion with the DNC to help Clinton get a favored view across to the readers, but speaks volumes about the ethics (or lack thereof) that is prevalent in today’s media organizations.
In yet another email first discovered by American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson, Jason Seher, writer/producer of The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN, coordinated the content of an interview between Tapper and a representative of the DNC, Pablo Manriquez (aka Pablo), DNC’s Director of Hispanic Media.
The exchange shows that the interview was scripted to focus on what the DNC basically wanted Tapper to talk about.
Another email titled “Bernie narrative,” which has actually been documented by even the mainstream media, and which was sent by DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach to Miranda, shows that top party officials at the DNC were regularly attempting to fabricate false narratives to encourage a negative view of Sanders campaign.
“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,” Paustenbach wrote in the May 21 message, according to Zero Hedge .
“Specifically, [Debbie Wasserman Schultz] had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they’d either ignored or forgotten to something critical.”
Another email from late May laid out the pros and cons of DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, accepting an invitation to CBS’s Face the Nation , and seemed to prove that the DNC was actively plotting its moves based on what would be favorable to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
The DNC Wikileaks hack has these examples in plenty. Yet another exchange released in the Friday leak indicates shows that the DNC was in constant contact with news websites in order to regulate the headlines of articles that were related to the Democratic Party, or more specifically, to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The headline of a Real Clear Politics article talking about the disunity within the party ranks was allegedly changed after Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided it was not good enough for the image of the party.
There is little doubt that DNC made an extensive and coordinated effort to “control content” on mainstream media, thereby pushing a negative view of Bernie Sanders, even as it did everything imaginable to portray a positive image of Hillary Clinton throughout the course of the primary season.
Quite clearly, then, these email exchanges are some of the starkest examples of mainstream media’s utter collusion with the DNC to fashion a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign. While this unethical collusion is something that Bernie Sanders supporters often attempted to bring to a wider attention during the primary season, these fears were often labeled as “paranoia” by sections of the press. But now with the evidence at hand, it would be difficult even for mainstream media organizations like CNN , MSNBC and Politico to defend their unethical, if not outright illegal, actions.
The mainstream media acted unethically time and again, sidelining any known standard of journalistic ethics. In effect, the mainstream media colluded with the DNC to paint a fabricated picture of Hillary Clinton, while killing Bernie Sanders campaign altogether.
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