So, looks like Obama advisor, author, and all-’round intellectual powerhouse Samantha Power has resigned today under heavy public pressure from the Clinton campaign. If you’re not in the campaign dugout following the inside baseball, lemme back up here.
Power, in giving an interview to the Scotsman newspaper, called Clinton “a monster” and unfortunately immediately tried to take that comment “off the record.” While there is much insightful hand-wringing and back-and-forth over at Romenesko over when a source can take a journo “off the record,” I think something that should be a real concern to anyone concerned about journalism ethics here is the bang-up, New York Post-style headline writing over there in Scotland and the way they just took this thing and ran with it, turning basically 5 words into a 1,500-word story.
The whole thing reeks of gotcha journalism and privileging conflict over substance, which are two of the biggest problems with campaign journalism anyway. Depressing.
Sure, calling people “monsters” maybe isn’t proper, but neither is making a mountain out of a molehill. (That goes for you, Scotsman folks, and you, Clinton folks.)
In the end, it’s too bad. Power was by far the most intelligent person affiliated with any campaign I’ve heard speak at length for many years.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: campaign journalism, clinton, election08, gotcha, obama, samantha power
