@Cycloptichorn,
So your source is a Politico reporter and his sources are more
unnamed people familiar with the investigation? Not saying that the story can't be true, but considering the track record of these folks with
familiarity (who always seem ready and willing to blab whenever a reporter needs to come up with a scoop) I wouldn't bet the ranch on this story until Mueller publicly confirms it.
Although they aren't addressed in the linked article, you presented one or two assumptions as if they were fact. The reporter's sources apparently didn't advise him that such conclusions were part of
their familiarity or he, more than likely, would have also presented them as if they were fact,(just as he did with their alleged assertions). Based on these alleged assertions of the
sources with familiarity, your conclusions certainly seem reasonable but they remain speculative until they are based on confirmed facts.
Unless reporters relying on these sort of sources have a lot fewer embarrassing moments where it becomes clear they were either duped by the sketchy sources or made up information to fit the stories they wanted to report, at some point they will be even more widely thought of as having the credibility of jailhouse snitches. It may take longer than it should because, as is typical within a group of professionals, so many of their colleagues in the media appear to be more forgiving of professional transgressions than those not in the club and who have no reason to think
"There but for the grace of God go I."
The following is an interesting and somewhat frustrating article from Mother Jones; written in June of 2012 and entitled
Who Reports on the Reporters?. It may also be slightly prophetic in an indirect way.
The author, Kevin Drum writes during a time before so many reporters and editors found it acceptable to go with a story based on single anonymous sources who can only offer their authority on a subject by claiming they are
familiar with either one or more of the actors or some aspect of the event or situation.
The article begins with the story of a BuzzFeed reporter, Rebecca Elliott, who interviewed a couple of experts and then wrote a story that contained none of the information they provided to her. Drum then goes on to quote from the reaction to the situation by Jonathan Bernstein who now writes a column for "Bloomberg View" and at one time taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University. It is unclear whether Bernstein is one of the two experts BuzzFeed interviewed, and if not, why Drum has chosen to bring his views into the article. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that Berstein found Elliot's (and by extension other reporters') practices at least controversial because Drum writes:
Quote:Jonathan Bernstein wonders if public complaints about this kind of behavior will change the way reporters operate
Drum then quotes Bernstein's take that reporters often provide experts they seek out with
Quote:...the experience of being interviewed as “experts”, only to find that what a reporter really wanted was to find someone to say something the interviewer believed, but needed someone “objective” to say.
Bernstein then addresses what is presumably the central question of the article:
Quote:What happens, however, when those experts choose to report on that interaction — and have an easy way to do so that the rest of their “expert” class will see? Or perhaps not that version, but the one where the reporter calling you doesn’t seem to know the basics, or the one where, as in the example above, the reporter ignores everything you said and writes the same story she intended to write.
[/b] (emphasis from source)
In closing, Drum writes the bit that has a faint smell of prophecy:
Quote:Is this kind of thing likely to increase? If it does, will it make much difference? Or will it just become the new normal and nobody will really care?
I sometimes wonder if reporters and commentators (not political science experts who write blogs) who report and comment on the news media and their fellow
professionals (People like Drum, Howard Kurz, Jim Pinkerton, Sharyl Attkisson, Margaret Carlson, David Zurawick and others) are ever thought of by their colleagues who cover less navel-gazing beats, in the way that cops and detectives think of their
colleagues who work for their force's Internal Affairs Departments.
I have had a number of cops in my family and my wife's family and I know that they, at least, are about as fond of Internal Affairs as the cops in TV dramas and movies are portrayed to be. I know no one who serves or has served in an IA Dept, but I seriously doubt that they are all the sneaky s.o.b.'s that
they are portrayed to be in the same police dramas. It does seem to me though that the majority of reporters who specialize in reporting on the media, in varying degrees, all tend towards reliably defending their fellow journalists and American journalism in general, rather than
nailing crooked bastards (even if they are innocent) the way TV and Movie IA Detectives do. I suppose this should be expected since
A) As members of the News Media population they have perhaps a much better understanding of how it actually operates than anyone outside of it,
B) They are no more immune than members of the White House Press Corps and Network anchors, to the desire to believe that they, their colleagues and their profession are an absolutely essential protector of American democracy and that they are often all that stands between a crooked politician, or vile corporate cabal and Joe and Jane Sixpack struggling to keep their family farm from going down in the Heartland, Grandma Garcia living in a rundown nursing home in Southern California or DeMarcus and Sharon Wilson growing up in a Chicago ghetto; and
C) As members of the News Media population, making fine livings in their field, they can't afford to enrage too many network anchors, primetime opinion show hosts, editors or billionaire media conglomerate owners.
I've come to believe that the concept of advocacy journalism is only going to grow in popularity among people in the News Business. Even if Trump doesn't win a second term and a Democrat moves to the White House in 2021, I don't see the News Biz moving back to anything that resembles impartial journalism, nor moving off of an ideological activism based platform, and this will be all the more certain if the MSM plays an important role in seeing Trump removed from office before his first term is up. Give people power (especially young, driven people with highly inflated opinions of themselves) and they are going to be reluctant to part with it. Advocacy Journalists may not turn their aim on a sufficiently progressive Democrat president, but they will be certain to find new causes to support with the power of propaganda.
It's nothing to look forward to.