The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway on Tuesday nailed exactly what’s wrong with a profanity-laced exchange between a Republican congressional candidate and a smug Politico journalist. Reporter Marc Caputo has been praised by others in the media for releasing on YouTube his phone conversation with the GOP’s Dan Bongino.
In it, Bongino and Caputo scream at each other over campaign coverage and the press. Hemingway marveled, “What’s interesting about the exchange for a media critic, insofar as it is interesting, is that Caputo seems to think he came off well. So does The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Caputo proudly published the audio of his call on YouTube and posted it on Politico."
Hemmingway listed several things wrong with the altercation. In a section entitled, “A political reporter should not be a campaign operative,” she reminded:
Marc Caputo’s title at Politico Florida is “reporter.” “He writes the Florida Playbook and covers the politics of one of the country’s key swing states,” his bio reads.
According to his bio, he’s not a political commentator. His job is not to insert himself into a story. He’s supposed to report on political races and do it in such a way so that readers feel they can trust him to not get too emotionally invested in its outcome.
After he posted the audio of his passive-aggressive taunting of a candidate he is supposed to cover and people responded negatively, he spent his entire day tweeting about his hatred for the candidate he’s supposed to be covering. He retweeted negative comments about Bongino.
Hemmingway concluded, “Caputo may feel very proud of himself at this moment, and certainly there will be some journalistic bros who cheer him on. But the damage to his credibility among readers should give him pause."
In 2015, the Media Research Center named Hemingway the first annual Noel Sheppard Media Blogger of the Year.
