The circular logic behind media coverage of the Clinton email story: (HILLARY GROUP)

[DeepModem Mom]

....Now before the chants of “Clinton apologist!” begin, let me say that like many liberals, I have complicated feelings about Clinton, some positive and some not so positive. I’ve written many critical pieces about her in the past; I’ve even criticized her for setting up a private email server....

We’re still waiting for somebody to explain the crime Hillary Clinton committed. And to repeat, maybe there is one; who knows. Reporters who find this story interesting should keep digging into the substance, and eventually they and the investigators looking into it will be able to tell us definitively whether there’s anything there.

But the campaign reporters trailing Clinton around aren’t adding much of anything to the story, they’re just asking whether they’ll be asking more questions about it. That’s partly the nature of campaign reporting, and partly because with a Democratic race that’s far less compelling than what’s going on over on the Republican side, they’re starved for things to talk about (and they’d be much more interested if Bernie Sanders and Clinton were attacking each other, which they aren’t). It’s also because of what are often referred to as the “Clinton Rules,” which state that when it comes to Bill and Hillary Clinton, you can whip up a faux scandal out of nothing, then keep talking about it because it’s “out there,” regardless of whether anything problematic has actually been discovered.

The email story may not be the most ridiculous fake scandal in the history of the Clintons, because there’s a lot of competition for that title. As has often been the case, it was a poor decision Hillary Clinton made that got the scandal ball rolling. But there are only so many times you can ask “What is she hiding???” before you have to come up with something that she might actually be hiding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/19/the-circular-logic-behind-media-coverage-of-the-clinton-email-story/ via Paul Waldman, Washington Post

[planetc]

1. I'm glad you're raised these points ...

First, the number of times you can ask "What is she hiding?" is infinite, because after it begins to look as though there isn't anything she's hiding, you switch smoothly over to "Questions can be/are being asked." about something else. In the Clinton presidency, we went from Travel Gate to Futures Trades Gate to Rose Billing Records Gate seamlessly. Many many questions were asked, and went unanswered, because the media never have to prosecute anything in a court of law. They often don't know what actually are crimes, and they don't know how you would go about proving that a crime was committed by suspect A. The genius of this approach is that questions can be asked about anything! If you dress up the subject of the questions in official sounding government terminology, then it sounds as though something important is being discussed.

And so, when you say:
"We’re still waiting for somebody to explain the crime Hillary Clinton committed. And to repeat, maybe there is one; who knows. Reporters who find this story interesting should keep digging into the substance, and eventually they and the investigators looking into it will be able to tell us definitively whether there’s anything there."

It's entirely possible we will never know what, if anything, is there. That's because the third phase of the investigation is about handling of classified material. And that, of course, cannot be revealed to the general public. Actually, for my money, we already know whether Clinton mishandled classified material. She didn't, because none of it originated in her office, and those emails she received were not marked classified at the time. Probably because they weren't classified at the time. This non-scandal has yielded some interesting information, though, because many of us didn't understand that stuff can be declared classified after it was generated, and even after it was put into the public domain *by the government.*

[mcar]

2. This exactly!

[yallerdawg]

3. The media created this ridiculous email story.

Hillary has answered their questions repeatedly, but will never have an answer to their ongoing misrepresentation of facts.

My favorite now is the trope that regarding the server, the FBI only does criminal investigation, so ergo Hillary is under criminal investigation. That is a fantastic leap of logical fallacy! But if A is true - "admit it!" - then, logically, B must be true. Now, this is followed with, "See, it's her fault and do you want this until election day? You know we won't ever stop!"

They really do think we are stupid (not the time to mention "Trump," please).

Once Hillary supporters understood that there were a different set of rules regarding the Clintons, we all knew what was ahead.

If it wasn't emails, it would be something else.

Why they hate her so, I can't imagine?

[OKNancy]

4. I finally saw a sane guest on MSNBC about an hour ago

One line: She shouldn't be given preference, but she also shouldn't be treated worse than any number of government officials.
He went on to say that you could dig into about any government person and if you looked hard enough you could find the same type of things ... including using personal accounts.