The Wardman Wire

Via Iain Dale and the Spectator CoffeeHouse.

Obama adviser Samantha Powers confided to a Scotsman journalist that she regards Hillary Clinton as a “monster”. It was an on-the-record interview but after Powers misspoke she instructed Peev “that’s off the record”.

Here’s an NBC News report on msnbc.com, which to me seems a pretty straight report.

and there was also a segment on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson programme.

First, an account from the Coffee House:

Why, Carlson asked, didn’t Peev do what she was told? She did a double-take. “Are you really that acquiescent in America?”. If the subject thinks “woops, that was controversial” and wants to strike a remark off the record that’s too bad unless this has been agreed beforehand. A riled Carlson thought he’d beat her up a bit and said “journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here” [in America] so “it’s a little much being lectured in journalistic ethics”. Doesn’t what Peev did make it more difficult for journalists to get to the truth? Peev replied: “If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate then I would argue that your journalists aren’t doing a very good job of getting to the truth.

Or, as The Osterley Times puts it:

I’m always stunned by the way American political journalists genuflect in front of politicians. Here Tucker Carlson explains why. They are worried they’ll lose access.

Here’s the full 10 minute segment.

Writing from this side of the pond, I think Gerri Peev gave a pretty good account of herself, and my first thought about Tucker - when he tried to defend the right of an interviewee to withdraw a quote in an on the record interview, while at the same time questioning the journalistic ethics of an entire country - was that he came across as a bit of a tosser wide boy.

If he’s going question any ethics in this case, perhaps it should be the ethics (or lack thereof) inside the campaign teams. I don’t think the messenger should be the story, when the unforgiveable sin appears to have been revealing the “Clinton is a monster” attitude inside the camp, rather than holding that attitude.

Tucker also focuses the debate in the interview on the Clinton campaign, rather than digging into the team - Barack Obama’s - who have been revealed as having the “internal difficulty”. Why?

Wrapping Up

Further links:

• Democracy in America says that Peev’s action was not in the public interest.
• Glenn Greenwald says that interviewees cannot demand to withdraw remarks on the record after the fact.
• Scotsman Editorial defending their decision to publish.

Tags: tucker carlson, msnbc, gerri peev, hilary clinton, barack obama, Samantha Powers