Why Does NBC Hate Hillary?

Posted by Linda Hirshman, AlterNet at 5:18 AM on November 3, 2007.

Guess what? NBC does not like it when we citizens of the new media republic catch them out. After Taylor Marsh caught Tim Russert making up stuff about Bill Clinton closing the archives waving an outdated thirteen year old document at an unsuspecting candidate for President ("I have here a list of Communists in the State Department"), the NBC NEWS ran a "special report" with Lisa Myers about how Bill Clinton closed the archives.

Boy, must have had that one in the works for a while.
Since they could not get the archivist to say anything beyond "I'm a librarian, and you're trying to take out books," they went to that legendary neutral expert on the rectitude of Bill Clinton, Judicial Watch.

In case you don't know it, Judicial Watch is the right wing funded (Scaife, etc.) attack dog group that spent much of the Nineties suing the Clintons. Surprise: Judicial Watch didn't think Bill Clinton had produced enough documents.
You would never know it to watch NBC "news" however, because they never mentioned who Judicial Watch was. Just put a microphone in front of the spokesman and let 'er rip.

The transparent (and hysterical) performance by Russert, who was clearly way out of his professional boundaries, was made hilariously worse by this utterly corrupt circling of the corporate wagons around his mistakes. Judicial watch? On the Clintons? And they call this news?

Tagged as: hillary clinton, bill clinton, nbc, russert, judicial watch

Linda Hirshman is the author of Get to Work ... And Get A Life Before It’s Too Late (Penguin 2007). A retired philosophy professor, she blogs at the New Republic, the American Prospect, TPMCafe, and elsewhere