The media seemed eager to mitigate the damage to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after the FBI gave its recommendation that no criminal charges be pressed in the investigation of her private email server.
FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges Tuesday, although the FBI investigation found she sent and received top secret emails on her private server.
‘To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences,” Comey said.
Many media outlets seemed to plant themselves in Clinton’s corner after the announcement, running headlines and stories charitable to her campaign.
The New York Times ran a story referring to Comey’s comments on Clinton’s private email server as a “bracing reminder that things tend to get complicated with the Clintons.”
The Washington Post ran the headline, “How Republicans Will Bait FBI Director Into Damaging Hillary Clinton.” The article quoted Abbe Lowell, who said that Comey’s claim that Clinton’s actions may have allowed “hostile actors” to gain confidential information only gave Republicans “political material to damage Clinton’s presidential candidacy.”
MSNBC ran an article after Comey’s announcement referring to his comments about Clinton’s carelessness with classified information as “not altogether flattering.” The article went on to say that the email probe fell in line with another one of Clinton’s so called “controversies,” which lead to “dubious and largely underwhelming allegations are taken very seriously by Republicans and much of the media, which leads to a lengthy investigation, which amounts to very little.”
Other media outlets also seemed to defend Clinton.
A Huffington Post article titled “Reject Immoral Equivalence” stipulated that while Clinton “had done stupid things,” politicians lie regularly. It also claimed that the public’s belief of Clinton’s tendency to lie stems from “a narrative skillfully woven by right-wingers from the early 1990s onward.” Another Huffington Post article called the FBI’s announcement an “important victory” and noted that “this finding will not bring an end to Republican criticism.”
Jim Whelan, a New Jersey state senator, referred to Clinton using a private email server as a “mistake.” He defended Clinton’s private server, saying that “others did similar type of things. I mean, there may be a nuance, so — but I think the other thing is, really there’s a repeated pattern with Donald Trump, that he did in Atlantic City and done elsewhere.”
(via: Daily Caller)
