Cancel 2018. 3
<-- sched 2, MJ sched 1
White House gets CBS to remove blog post alleging possible high court nominee is gay
There's not yet an official nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens — but the Obama White House's rapid-response machine is already working overtime to squelch speculation over the politics of the nominations process. Last week, it took just a few hours for the administration's communications team to tamp down a rumor that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on the short list of prospective nominees. (See our coverage of the Hillary rumor, and other names floated at the margins of the nomination debate here.) And yesterday, the administration blasted CBS News for a blog post on its Web site claiming that one of the people who is reportedly on that list — U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan — is a lesbian, eventually getting the news organization to retract the claim and take down the post.
The episode marks a curious case study in both the politics surrounding the high court and the blurry line between opinion and reporting in the fast-moving world of online journalism. On the White House side, administration flaks had to strike a delicate balance between their demands that CBS remove content that they insisted was factually incorrect — without at the same time suggesting that anything would be amiss if the rumors about Kagan's sexuality proved to be true. (See our assessment of Kagan and the other reported inside candidates for the nomination here.) In her statement on the episode, Anita Dunn, a former White House spokeswoman who is now consulting with the administration on its communications strategy for the upcoming nominations fight, focused instead on the motivations of the blogger who floated the rumor, conservative writer Ben Domenech, a former GOP Senate staffer and Bush White House aide. Dunn charged that by circulating the rumor, Domenech was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100416/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1652
very interesting, especially if the executive branch is demanding the media to do something....
There's not yet an official nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens — but the Obama White House's rapid-response machine is already working overtime to squelch speculation over the politics of the nominations process. Last week, it took just a few hours for the administration's communications team to tamp down a rumor that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on the short list of prospective nominees. (See our coverage of the Hillary rumor, and other names floated at the margins of the nomination debate here.) And yesterday, the administration blasted CBS News for a blog post on its Web site claiming that one of the people who is reportedly on that list — U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan — is a lesbian, eventually getting the news organization to retract the claim and take down the post.
The episode marks a curious case study in both the politics surrounding the high court and the blurry line between opinion and reporting in the fast-moving world of online journalism. On the White House side, administration flaks had to strike a delicate balance between their demands that CBS remove content that they insisted was factually incorrect — without at the same time suggesting that anything would be amiss if the rumors about Kagan's sexuality proved to be true. (See our assessment of Kagan and the other reported inside candidates for the nomination here.) In her statement on the episode, Anita Dunn, a former White House spokeswoman who is now consulting with the administration on its communications strategy for the upcoming nominations fight, focused instead on the motivations of the blogger who floated the rumor, conservative writer Ben Domenech, a former GOP Senate staffer and Bush White House aide. Dunn charged that by circulating the rumor, Domenech was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100416/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1652
very interesting, especially if the executive branch is demanding the media to do something....