MRC's Gainor Rebukes Politico Reporter's Contact with Clinton Campaign

October 18th, 2016 4:27 PM

The recently leaked trove of emails from Hillary Clinton and her staff, revealed many items of concern including cozy and unethical interactions with the press.

MRC Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor chastised the media saying, “This is the worst bias election probably anybody has ever seen anywhere.”

Gainor appeared on Fox Business Network’s Intelligence Report with Trish Regan on Oct. 18, to discuss WikiLeaks’s emails showing how the press interacted with the Hillary Clinton campaign, specifically Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

Thrush sent an email to campaign chairman John Podesta ahead of time containing parts of an article Thrush wrote that mentioned Podesta. Reporter Trish Regan expressed her disbelief, asking, “What’s wrong with that, Dan?”

“Well, there’s a lot wrong with it,” Gainor said. “When you send out either a story or a big chunk of your story, that gives appearance, I guess you’d say the stink of, either prior approval, or you’re putting a source on notice.”

Noting the increased bias in this election’s journalism, Gainor rebuked Thrush for “doing something that in more than 20 years in journalism, reporters I’ve known would have cringed at doing.”

Gainor observed that, considering Thrush has already made a comment on “Trump’s march to the abyss, sapping the joy out of Hillary Clinton’s history-making 2016 finale … it doesn’t sound very believable that he’s neutral.”

Gainor and Regan added that this wasn’t the first time Politico had been called out for such behavior.

“Back in July, Ken Vogel … had sent a story to the DNC. Same deal except the full story,” said Gainor. He said The Washington Post reported Politico’s response explaining “they don’t generally do this, it’s the policy not to do it, and it takes editor approval.”

Although it may not be its policy, Gainor added “if you look at Glenn Thrush’s Twitter account … he also admits that he does it all the time.”

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