Politico went ahead and did some journalism on Thursday evening. Naturally, every wine mom on Twitter went ballistic.
Reporting on the White House’s favorite pundit, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, Politico reporters Alex Thompson and Nick Niedzwiadek reached out to the former neocon who has branded herself an “Andrew Cuomo Democrat” in the post-Trump era. After refusing an interview or offer to comment, the duo emailed Rubin one final time about their reporting on her public popularity among White House chief of staff Ron Klain, the State Department, and the Democratic National Committee.
In response to fairly anodyne reporting, Rubin responded with a diatribe and the subject line “OFF THE RECORD”:
And btw, what a low class move to do this on Yom Kippur at the last moment.
Naturally, Politico published her email in full, as off the record agreements are exactly that: agreements. Subjects have zero privilege to a reporter’s secrecy so long as the reporter has properly identified themselves as such.
That Rubin’s TDS-ridden fan base would attack Politico as reflexively as they loathe the Bad Orange Man is not terribly surprising. That fellow journalists would do so is quite a bit more galling.
Ian Millhiser at Vox charged Politico with trashing “its reputation as a outlet that won’t burn its sources.” NPR’s David Gura falsely equated Politico publishing a totally on-the-record email with violating the anonymity of a tip line. The always eloquent Oliver Willis deemed Rubin and Politico “bad.” Riveting stuff.
Politico did nothing wrong, and every journalist in the business knows it. There was an entire news cycle dedicated to Anthony Scaramucci getting fired from the White House after just 11 days because he infamously threatened to fire his entire communications team and “kill” all the leakers, called Reince Priebus a “f***ing paranoid schizophrenic,” and claimed Steve Bannon was “trying to suck [his] own c**k”!
Rubin isn’t some college blogger. She’s an attorney and journalist who has been in the business for decades. The Washington Post has won 69 Pulitzer Prizes. You’re telling me the paper that broke Watergate staffs journalists who don’t understand a concept taught in high school newspaper classes? Rubin is not a victim, and journalists attacking Politico are pandering out of pure politics.
