Is Hillary Clinton Afraid of Them Opening the Email Case Again

We can all finally stop worrying well-nigh Hillary Clinton'south emails.

Last calendar week, Congress received a brief, nine-page report from the State Department, which summarizes the section'south investigation into Hillary Clinton's employ of a personal e-mail business relationship to carry piece of work business concern while she was secretarial assistant of state. The written report tin be fairly summarized in two sentences: She shouldn't have washed that. But it wasn't that big of a bargain.

Thus, America finally has closure on a minor scandal that many of the nation's almost powerful and influential news editors treated every bit if it were the nigh important issue facing voters in the 2016 election. "In just six days," co-ordinate to an analysis of 2016 coverage published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), "the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton'southward emails as they did about all policy problems combined in the 69 days leading upwards to the ballot." And the Times was hardly alone in this regard.

By contrast, the Times's piece on the Country Department report last that Her Emails weren't really that big of a deal ran on folio A16 in print. (It was featured somewhat more prominently on the Times'southward online homepage.) Similarly, data provided to Vox by the liberal grouping Media Matters indicates that boob tube news — all three major cable networks plus all three broadcast stations — spent a full of less than 56 minutes combined on the new State Department report.

A screenshot of the forepart folio of the New York Times on October 29, 2016. A letter from and so-FBI Director James Comey brought Hillary Clinton's emails back into news coverage only before Election Mean solar day.

The Land Section'south study reaches 2 broad conclusions. Clinton'south "use of a private electronic mail system to behave official business organisation added an increased degree of risk" that classified information would exist compromised. But "there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information."

In 2016, the State Department's inspector general also adamant that Clinton's Republican predecessors, Secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, also received classified information on their personal email accounts.

So Clinton committed the aforementioned mistake committed by her predecessors — Powell reportedly advised Clinton to utilise a personal email account for non-classified communications shortly later on Clinton became secretary — and the State Section's report found no systemic mishandling of information.

Clinton's use of private electronic mail was the sort of small-scale scandal that the public deserved to exist informed about at some indicate during the 2016 ballot — afterwards which the news cycle could movement on to other, more than important stories. Just that sure as hell wasn't how information technology was covered. Indeed, it is likely that Donald Trump is president today in part because of the press's obsession with this very small story.

The printing covered Clinton's emails with an Ahab-like obsession

Months subsequently the 2016 election, a team of researchers at Harvard'southward Berkman Klein Centre for Cyberspace & Society set out to quantify which issues received coverage — and which issues were ignored — by major media outlets during that election. To practise so, they read thousands of campaign-related articles in several major outlets, and counted how many sentences were devoted to various issues. The results are hitting.

Faris, Robert M., Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler. 2017.

As CJR later summarized this research, the Berkman Klein Eye "found roughly four times as many Clinton-related sentences that described scandals as opposed to policies, whereas Trump-related sentences were one-and-a-half times equally likely to be about policy as scandal." Indeed, emails and so dominated coverage that "the diverse Clinton-related email scandals—her use of a individual email server while secretary of state, as well as the DNC and John Podesta hacks—accounted for more sentences than all of Trump's scandals combined (65,000 vs. 40,000) and more than twice every bit many as were devoted to all of her policy positions."

Meanwhile, CJR researchers Duncan J. Watts and David Thousand. Rothschild did a deep dive into how the New York Times covered 2016, and their findings are simply every bit stark. "Of the ane,433 articles that mentioned Trump or Clinton," during the last 69 days of the 2016 campaign, "291 were devoted to scandals or other personal matters while only 70 mentioned policy, and of these only 60 mentioned any details of either candidate's positions."

One-hundred fifty of these New York Times manufactures, moreover, appeared on the paper's forepart folio. Of these, only sixteen discussed policy in any style, "of which six had no details, iv provided details on Trump's policy only, one on Clinton'due south policy only, and five made some comparison between the two candidates' policies." By contrast, the Times ran 10 front end-page articles on Clinton'due south emails in just 6 days, between October 29 and November 3.

The overarching impression created past this reporting, in other words, was that the emails were more important than all of the policy questions facing voters in 2016 — questions like whether millions of Americans would lose health care, whether the The states would bar immigrants because of their religion, and who would control the Supreme Court.

We cannot know with certainty what would have happened if news outlets did not fixate on this story during 2016. But as Tina Nguyen wrote in Vanity Fair, "you could fit all the voters who cost Clinton the election in a mid-sized football stadium." As FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver wrote in 2017, "Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had non sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28" that reinvigorated the emails story shortly before the election.

We do know, moreover, that the obsessive coverage of Clinton'south emails shaped how voters perceived the 2016 race. In September 2016, Gallup asked voters what they recalled hearing nearly the 2 major presidential candidates. The word cloud for Trump primarily shows a mixture of immigration policy and generic campaign terms.

Meanwhile, Clinton'south discussion cloud speaks for itself.

The press obsession with regime It security, moreover, appears to exist a passing fad that ended the moment Clinton lost her shot at the White House. News bankrupt final November, for example, that Start Daughter and presidential aide Ivanka Trump "sent hundreds of emails terminal yr to White Business firm aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules." Yet this story received only a fraction of the coverage that Clinton's emails received.

There is an of import chat to be had about electronic mail security at the State Department, but we didn't take it in 2016

Setting aside the media mania over Clinton's emails, there is a very important story about classified email security at the State Section that journalists could accept told in 2016. Broadly speaking, the federal government'due south processes regarding how classified data should exist handled are designed with low and mid-level personnel in mind, and are sick-suited for the issues facing very senior diplomats.

As of October of 2015, 4.3 1000000 people have security clearances from the United States government. This includes some very low-level personnel who have access to extraordinarily sensitive information. Recall of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who leaked hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, battleground reports, and other classified documents when she was a junior enlisted soldier.

Considering there is such a high hazard that someone could leak damaging national security information, the protocols for treatment such information are often very strict, and the penalties for violating these protocols can be quite high. The fact that then many people must comply with these protocols too fed a perception that Clinton refused to obey rules that rank-and-file government employees must follow religiously.

But the fact is that the secretary of state — be it Clinton, Rice, or Powell — is very different from a low-ranking soldier like Manning. The rigid protocols that we impose on most people with security clearances do non always make sense for senior diplomats.

As Suzanne Nossel, a old deputy assistant secretary of country under Clinton, explained in a 2015 piece in Foreign Policy, "neither then-Secretary of Country Hillary Clinton nor her aides had a classified smartphone." Typically, State Section officials with access to classified information volition have one e-mail address for ordinary communications and another for classified communications (Clinton used her personal accost as her address for ordinary communications). But, to admission the classified address, an official must be at a special computer fix to admission classified information. Considering loftier-level officials are not always near such a computer, an email sent to a classified accost may non exist seen for "hours or fifty-fifty days."

A senior diplomat might need the secretary to tell her how to vote on a particular United nations resolution, for case. But if that diplomat follows proper protocol and queries the secretary over the classified e-mail system, the secretary may not see the email until the vote has already taken identify.

Senior diplomats, in Nossel's words, must "brand tough choices most the trade-off between security and the need for timely transmission of vital data." And in the heat of an ongoing negotiation or an impending crisis, it is not e'er clear that post-obit rigid protocols is in the best interests of the nation.

Clinton was, of course, the head of the Country Department, so she fairly tin be criticized for non implementing new processes that could accost these concerns. There is a nuanced conversation to be had most how the Country Department should rest concerns well-nigh information security with senior diplomats' demand to convey information quickly. News outlets could have used the controversy over Clinton'due south emails every bit a jumping-off point to spark this chat. Perhaps this kind of coverage could have pushed the section to implement needed reforms.

Instead, we got a circus where every new twist in the emails saga received big headlines and overwhelming coverage. We got an election bike where Hillary Clinton's IT practices received more coverage than her opponent bragging about how he grabs women "by the pussy" without their consent.

And now we accept an appropriate bookend for this media-fabricated scandal: a Land Section study that finds it was no large deal in the end, published on page A16 of the New York Times.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924795/hillary-clinton-emails-new-york-times-state-department

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