News media and politics: an uneasy union (who's married to who?)

[babylonsister]

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-prezmedia19mar19,1,3566921,full.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

News media and politics: an uneasy union
Some prominent journalists have mates who work for a presidential candidate. They approach this potential conflict in different ways.

By James Rainey, Times Staff Writer
March 19, 2007

Some of America's most prominent political journalists are, quite literally, wedded to the 2008 presidential race: Their spouses work for one of the candidates.

Relationships that cross the media-political divide raise ethical questions for the journalists and their employers. Should the potential conflict of interest merely be disclosed to readers or viewers? Or should the journalists be shifted to new assignments to lessen the appearance their motives might be divided?

Heading into the presidential election year, the answers to those questions have been markedly different for at least four journalists:

• Los Angeles Times political reporter Ronald Brownstein recently began a new assignment as a columnist for the newspaper's opinion and editorial pages after his bosses banned him from writing news stories about the presidential race. The Times was seeking to avoid the appearance of a conflict: Brownstein is married to Eileen McMenamin, chief spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain, a candidate for the Republican nomination.

• Matthew Cooper, the former Time magazine correspondent who was a witness in the recent trial of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, says he hasn't figured out exactly how to cope with the fact that his wife, Mandy Grunwald, is a chief ad strategist in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for the Democratic nomination. Now Washington editor for Portfolio magazine, Cooper said he expects to write about Clinton and "to acknowledge my wife works for Hillary … at least on Hillary-centric stories."

more...

[depakid]

1. It wasn't too difficult to have picked that up about Brownstein

The man's NOT someone people ought to trust or listen to- especially since he always seems to write equivocally about Democrats. For years it's been easy to read between the lines and see that he slants his copy and sometimes his subject matter as well.

Thanks for this post. It's nice to know my crap-o-meters been engaged and working well over these past 6 years.

Now, I wonder who Adam Nagourney's connected to? He's even more transparent than Brownstein.

[camero]

2. Rock star media and rock star pols go hand in hand

All the way to the bank.