Wikileaks: Democrat-Media Complex Hall of Fame (So Far)

The latest batch of Wikileaks emails reveals further collusion between mainstream media journalists and outlets on the one hand, and the Hillary Clinton campaign on the other.

Andrew Breitbart called that collusion the “Democrat-media complex,” and it first emerged in 2008 with the exposure of “JournoList,” whose members discussed accusing conservative writers of racism to distract from the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Wikileaks proves: “JournoList” lives on. Here are the winners thus far.

• Louise Mensch, Heat Street: Mensch runs the Heat Street blog, which ostensibly opposes identity politics, “safe spaces,” and “social justice warriors.” However, she reached out to the Hillary Clinton campaign about creating an ad that advocates for the former Secretary of State based solely on her gender (“… and the last woman says, ‘It’s our time. I’m with her.'”). The proposed ad found its way to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s inbox. (He liked the idea.)
• Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post: The Post‘s White House bureau chief tried to alert Podesta that his name was going to come up in the context of an upcoming story: “I just wanted to make sure John Podesta had a heads up that his name will be in a story concerning the White House’s ethics policy, which could run on Monday … This is just one line, pretty low down in the piece, but I don’t want him to be surprised since we never discussed it face-to-face,” she wrote.
• John Harwood, CNBC/New York Times: Harwood was the moderator for a Republican primary debate in the fall of 2015, but was constantly emailing Podesta to offer political support, even congratulating him on Hillary Clinton’s primary wins. He also gloated in one email about asking Donald Trump provocative questions in the debate. And Harwood also used his exchanges with Podesta to minimize the Clinton e-mail scandal and Clinton Foundation scandal.
• Haim Saban, Univision: The Hollywood mogul and Clinton donor also owns Spanish-language giant Univision, and was exposed by Wikileaks steering the campaign into doing things that the network might cover favorably, or to her advantage. As NewsBusters notes, Saban requested, and received, a call from Podesta, which then shaped campaign media strategy about Clinton’s reaction to Trump’s controversial statements about illegal immigrants from Mexico.
• Rebecca Quick, CNBC: The co-host of Squawk Box and a co-moderator with Harwood, Quick promised to support Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services who was appointed after Kathleen Sebelius resigned in the wake of the failed launch of healthcare.gov. She wrote, in a message to debt commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, that she “will make sure to defend [Burwell] when things get further along in the nomination process.”
• Donna Brazile, CNN: Brazile is the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, but when she was still a CNN contributor, she managed to pass a question to the Clinton campaign that was to be asked at a March 2016 town hall between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Both Brazile and CNN deny it — with CNN blaming a third party — but Brazile sent an email: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” The question was indeed asked.
• Nick Kristof, New York Times: One email to Podesta reveals that Kristof gave Bill Clinton’s staff the questions that he would later be asking in an interview at the Foursquare Conference. Kristof, a columnist, is not exactly anyone’s idea of an impartial journalist, but since he is associated with the New York Times, presumably conference attendees, who are media professionals, expected some semblance of an actual interview, not a canned presentation with Kristof as a prop.
• Mark Leibovich, New York Times: Leibovich interviewed Hillary Clinton, then submitted the result to her staff for edits, one email chain reveals. As Breitbart News’ Dustin Stockton notes: “The Clinton campaign vetoed nearly the entire interview, but even in the portions they did approve for publication, they had Mark Leibovich edit out a mention of Sarah Palin, apparently at Hillary’s personal request.” The apparent “joke” involved Palin cooking moose stew.

More, apparently, to come.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.