If the establishment press was treating Hillary Clinton's private server/email and other controversies as the genuine scandals and the national security nightmares that they really are, we'd be getting daily or near-daily updates on the latest developments.
It really isn't too much to ask. After all, outlets like the Associated Press frequently capsulized the latest Watergate developments during 1973 and 1974 (four such examples from 1973 are here, here, here and here; note that the first three items all appeared within three days of each other). It is fortunate, since the AP and others traditional hard-news outlets won't do their jobs, that an Investor's Business Daily editorial presented a readily understandable Hillary scandal summary on Wednesday.
IBD identified "at least" five discrete important stories in occurring over just 24 hours (bolds are mine):
Clinton Email Scandal: 5 New Stories Tell Us It's Getting Serious
The trouble started Tuesday night when the Washington Post reported that Clinton's story about the manner in which she turned over her emails was being contradicted by the State Department. She has claimed that she handed them over — all of them — as part of a routine request that included emails from previous secretaries of state.
The State Department said it didn't happen that way.
... About an hour later, Politico reported that "previously undisclosed State Department emails related to Benghazi have surfaced in a federal court filing."
Apparently these were emails that had been held back when Citizens United, a group that Clinton has targeted because it made an unflattering documentary about her, had earlier sought "information about contacts between a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and officials with the Clinton Foundation."
The emails appear to have also been withheld, said Politico, from the House Select Committee on Benghazi ...
... A third story that reflects poorly on Clinton is her dodgy response to the Washington Post's report.
She told the Des Moines Register that "I can't answer that" when a reporter asked her Tuesday about the discrepancy.
... The fourth story popped up early Wednesday morning. Several news outlets reported that the FBI has been able to recover emails from Clinton's private server that was thought to have been wiped clean.v
... The fifth story is the filing of a lawsuit by Judicial Watch asking for communications between Clinton and the White House "following the capture and slaying of Osama bin Laden."
... A candidate so continuously shadowed by scandal would be a problem president, the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.
Only a blind partisan would contend that the scandals with which Mrs. Clinton is clearly associated don't have far more potentially serious ramifications than Nixon's. For starters, nobody died in Watergate.
Unfortunately, as posters here at NewsBusters have observed and chronicled for months, the major broadcast networks have done their level best to ignore breaking Clinton scandal news and to minimize its significance. Meanwhile, the wire services have done virtually nothing to help infrequent news consumers quickly get their arms around the scandals. With the sole exception of Fox, the cable news outlets, while at least recognizing more developments, have been far too willing to chalk it all up to partisanship while worrying about how much of a "distraction" all of this has been to the person most of them would clearly love to see become the country's first woman president.
Given that the people who should be doing this kind of work won't, it would be nice if IBD would prepare additional updates similar to the one excerpted above. A collection of such "editorials" may someday be seen as the go-to-reference for historians and others who want to get their arms around what really happened. Sadly, they probably won't find an equivalent anywhere else.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
