Political Scandals

The New York Times classless liberal columnist Paul Krugman has a reputation for exploiting tragedy for partisan gain, and did so again Sunday afternoon, writing about former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, accused of using hush money to cover up sexual misconduct with a former student: "Defense of traditional values played a big role in the 2004 campaign....But what we’re now learning…

The latest network blackout concerning one of the Clinton scandals came to an end on NBC Thursday as a segment on Today by correspondent Andrea Mitchell mentioned an AP story from two days before exposing what appears to be a shell company run by former President Bill Clinton. ABC and CBS continued their streaks of ignoring it with all three having yet to utter a word about an International…

The Big Three's morning newscasts on Wednesday and Thursday all covered the breach of an online IRS system by hackers that compromised the personal information of 100,000 taxpayers. However, none of the programs mentioned President Obama by name during their reporting, nor did they revisit any of the other problems or scandals involving the agency in recent years. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly…

The Associated Press and Stephen Braun did all they could to cover for the Clintons yesterday. First, the wire service attached the most boring headline imaginable to Braun's story about Bill Clinton's shell company shenanigans: "Bill Clinton company shows complexity of family finances." The message to subscribers, particularly the broadcast networks: "This is boring and time-consuming. Don't…

TBS host Conan O'Brien took a new comedic shot at Hillary Clinton in a Wednesday post on Twitter – specifically, six-figure speaking fees that the former first lady charges; and, along with her husband's speaking engagements, has netted the couple $30 million in 16 months. O'Brien wrote, "I'd love to have @HillaryClinton as a guest on the show, but I can't afford her speaking fee."

While ignoring the rolling release of her State Department e-mails, Tuesday’s CBS This Morning did find time to tout Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton making the number two spot on the annual Forbes magazine list of the world’s most powerful women.

In a story for Tuesday’s NBC Today devoid of any Hillary Clinton critics, correspondent Andrea Mitchell highlighted “one Democratic ally,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, “considered a potential running mate by some should Clinton win the nomination,” dismissing the e-mail scandal still swirling around the former Secretary of State as a “side show.”

Friday's New Day on CNN played up that the Hillary Clinton e-mails revealed by the New York Times "dispute the narrative that has been around for two years that she was trying to cover something up" about the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, as Alisyn Camerota put it. The CNN anchor also wondered, "Isn't this the opposite of what the GOP has been saying about her – that she...tried to keep it…

In a complete non-surprise given her career track record, Hillary Clinton's definition of "cooperation" with requests to turn over whatever emails she unilaterally deigned could be seen meant giving them to the State Despartment on paper. That's lots and lots of paper, 55,000 pages in all, some of them double-sided, all seemingly part of a conscious strategy to deliberately slow down the process…

On Thursday, the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and NBC Nightly News showed no interest in informing their viewers that the State Department will soon be releasing the first batch of e-mails that Hillary Clinton turned over following the uncovering of her private e-mail server. While CBS and NBC punted on this revelation, ABC’s World News Tonight covered Clinton’s e-mails and surprisingly…

The Clinton cohorts are out to defend Hillary, and their maxim is that no Democratic scandal is really a scandal. Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton was on Fox News Channel’s The Kelly File Tuesday night, where he was pressed by Megyn Kelly on the “cloud of corruption that follows” Clinton everywhere she goes.

CNN's Gloria Borger asserted on Wednesday's Wolf program that the latest revelation involving a potential conflict of interest for Hillary Clinton – her e-mail exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal on Libya when she was secretary of state – wasn't much of a scandal: "I don't think this rises to a huge level, but it does show you that when you've been in public life for decades, you do collect a lot of…

Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall sees a pattern of self-deception among Clinton-loathing conservatives. Marshall acknowledges that Bill and Hillary Clinton routinely “play close to the line” and “refus[e] to play by rules tighter than those applied to anyone else,” but argues that right-wingers fool themselves when they insist that behind those tendencies lies criminality…

Following Hillary Clinton’s decision to take questions from the press for the first time in over three weeks, ABC, CBS and NBC all covered the story on their Tuesday evening newscasts and, once again, were all too happy to spin for her. They all mentioned a federal judge’s ruling that her e-mails should be released more quickly, but they ignored news that she had a second private e-mail address…