(04-19-2018 04:07 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(04-19-2018 01:15 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwlStill Wrote:  

(04-19-2018 11:15 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(04-19-2018 10:49 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwlStill Wrote:  

(04-18-2018 11:17 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  There are a lot of millennials who can vote but have no memory of george working for the Clintons.

To borrow a concept from the gun debate, if even one voter is unaware of George's past involvement with the Clintons, that is too many.

(You are probably correct about some younger people. I was familiar with Pierre Salinger as a journalist on ABC for years before I know he had worked for JFK.)

The difference is between something which is public knowledge and something intentionally concealed. From George's Bio at ABCnews.com:

"Stephanopoulos joined ABC News in 1997 as an analyst for "This Week." Prior to joining ABC News, he served in the Clinton administration as the Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy."

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/george-stephan...?id=133369

Granted, he has abjectly failed to tattoo "Former Clinton (Crooked Hillary's Husband!) Advisor" on his forehead.


Hannity failed to disclose that he was directly involved in a story he was reporting/commentating on. Basic journalism 101.

If it turns out George was secretly advising the Hillary Clinton campaign while reporting on it, he should absolutely lose his job.

By meeting with a guy previously and generally talking about very general legal matters. That is quite a stretch to "fail[] to disclose". Using that rubric, how many other people that Hannity meets at parties or at lunch every day shall he have to disclose every night?

Interesting the the line you draw to Hannity/Cohen is "directly involved" when, per Hannity, nothing substantive was ever discussed.

The line you draw to a person that had essentially co-ownership of the Clinto war room is that he must now rise to the level of "secretly advising the Hillary Clinton campaign" to be dinged.

Very good and artful line drawing, even though they are amazingly unbalanced in their application.

Um, no. Again, journalism 101. His involvement with Bill Clinton's campaign is public record. You are free to draw your own conclusions about his work based on that. Even sports talk radio guys say things like "full disclosure, Bill and I were both on Smith's staff back in the day".

You and Owl69 are correct in that no one is shocked Hannity is a partisan hack, the situation is causing more amusement than outrage. But the lines of ethics or at least professionalism are pretty clear that he should have disclosed something or just not covered it.

I guess that any journalist should never have any conversation with any attorney about any even generalized legal matter in any social setting whatsoever using that ethics regime.

I guess Im lucky to hell im not to be a journalist with that type of restriction.

Hannity admitted to requesting ACP with Cohen. How frequently does talking to someone at a cocktail party about "generalized legal matter(s)" include the non-attorney party explicitly asking for ACP?

Remember, Hannity has admitted to asking Cohen about legal questions regarding real estate, which is something Hannity has said he prefers to invest in, instead of markets. So it also wasn't just general legal information, he admits he was looking for specific advice. And then, when he was told he was going to be named as a client of Cohen, requested that Cohen's lawyer not disclose his name. So Hannity knew where he stood before his name was released in court.

I keep going back to the fact that Hannity requesting ACP explicitly means he can't really play dumb about not knowing he was becoming a "client" of Cohen. His explicit request means that he had an understanding that what he was asking Cohen about was privileged to only himself and Cohen.

If journalists started doing the same thing at cocktail mixers - asking for ACP about personal legal affairs - then yeah, they would either have to disclose that when they reported on those attorneys, avoid asking those things at cocktail parties, or cover a different beat.