Who Got Reuters to Pull Article on Sanders’ “Left Hook” TV Ad?

From reader Allan at 1:14 PM:

Sanders delivers left hook after Brooklyn brawl [Reuters]

The Sanders campaign released a television ad on Friday that skewered Clinton, without naming her, as accepting more than $200,000 from Wall Street for a speech while not embracing raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $15.

It depends on what the definition of `embrace’ is.

If you click on that URL at 6:00 PM, you get a different article:

Screen shot 2016-04-15 at 6.05.40 PM

If you Google the headline, you find the article under the Africa and UK site editions (actually it showed as being on the UK site edition when I first Googled but didn’t a while later when I decided to post about it).

Screen shot 2016-04-15 at 6.08.55 PM

And look at the URL, it is “http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-democrats-idUSKCN0XC05” as in originally tagged about being about Democrats. Pray tell why a Trump story is there now. And Google also shows the Trump article under the search for the article by title, which also confirms the swap. And the feed-through to Yahoo also seems consistent.

But it’s gone from the Africa edition too:

Screen shot 2016-04-15 at 6.14.56 PM

But you can still find some footprints of the original story:

Screen shot 2016-04-15 at 6.18.45 PM

The Clintons are well known for hectoring the press about unfavorable coverage. Still, it’s stunning to see Reuters cave in to what appears to be pressure from Hillary’s campaign, particularly since Clinton is never named.

Here is the ad. Please circulate widely:

Update 2:00 AM. Lambert had the presence of mind to search on text from the article. He found only two matches: one from the Daily Times of Pakistan, which was by “Agencies” and we did not verify whether it contained text from other wire services. (Enterprising reader rufus magister also located a copy at CompuServe Entertainment). However, the other one was from First Post of India with the headline: White House hopeful Sanders delivers left hook after Brooklyn brawl | Reuters. And as you can see below, the article closes with: “This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.”

Bear in mind that Reuters routinely updates articles, and labels them as updates. So it would seem to be very unusual for the to yank a story rather than correct it. Full text below:

NEW YORK Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders built on a combative U.S. presidential debate, pressuring front-runner Hillary Clinton on Friday over her high speaking fees and minimum-wage stance before Tuesday’s crucial New York nominating contest.

Sanders and Clinton challenged each other’s judgment and experience in New York’s Brooklyn borough on Thursday night in their most bellicose of nine debates, laying bare the mounting pressures on them both without seeming to change the dynamics of the race.

The Sanders campaign released a television ad on Friday that skewered Clinton, without naming her, as accepting more than $200,000 from Wall Street for a speech while not embracing raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $15.

While far short of the brawls that have characterized Republican debates, the tone reflected a contentious turn in the Democratic contest before Tuesday’s presidential primary in New York. Clinton and Sanders out-shouted each other while a split crowd roared its approval.

“If you’re both screaming at each other, the viewers won’t be able to hear either of you,” moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN warned during the debate, the latest ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

When the two-hour debate ended, social media analyst Brandwatch said Sanders had more than 173,000 mentions on Twitter, 55 percent of them positive, while Clinton had more than 191,000 mentions, 54 percent of them negative. Clinton mentions were more negative than positive in two out of the three previous debates.

A former U.S. senator from New York, Clinton needs a win to stop a streak of seven victories in the last eight nominating contests by the Brooklyn-born Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, and expand her commanding lead in pledged delegates to her party’s nominating convention in July.

Republicans were gleeful watching the bitter Democratic debate. “Hillary Clinton was supposed to have the nomination locked up by the end of March, but she’s instead lost seven straight states and is having to throw the kitchen sink at a 74-year old Vermont socialist as her once 60-point lead dwindles,” said Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee.

Sanders, 74, takes a quick break from the campaign trail on Friday to fly to the Vatican to give a brief speech at a conference on the world economy and social justice. Sanders, who will be back in New York to campaign on Sunday, has said the trip is not a political appeal for the Catholic vote but a testament to his admiration for Pope Francis.

MINIMUM WAGE FRACAS

At the debate, Clinton said she would sign a bill raising the federal minimum wage to $15 if it came from Congress, but she added that her position would be to follow the upstate New York model of raising it gradually. She defended her advocating for a $12 minimum wage by saying that was the first step in ultimately getting it raised to $15.

Both Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Clinton have big leads in state opinion polls heading into the New York contest. Trump needs a win to further his drive toward the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination, and avoid a contested July convention that could sow Republican chaos.

Clinton leads Sanders by 251 bound delegates to the July Democratic convention, where 2,383 delegates will be needed for the nomination. A democratic socialist, Sanders has gained in support as a champion of the working class vowing to erase economic inequality.

Sanders, who had questioned the former secretary of state’s qualifications to be president, conceded during the debate she was qualified but said she had shown poor judgment by taking money from Wall Street for speeches, by voting as a U.S. senator to back the 2003 Iraq invasion and by supporting free trade deals.

Clinton, 68, responded the charges were also an attack on President Barack Obama, who as a candidate raised money on Wall Street and utilized Super PACS, outside funding groups that can raise unlimited sums of money, but still fought for tough regulations on the financial services industry.

Pressed on what Clinton had done to show she was influenced by the money she had raised on Wall Street or her speaking fees, Sanders said she was too busy giving speeches to Goldman Sachs to break up the big banks.

“He cannot come up with any example because there is no example,” Clinton replied. “I stood up to the behavior of the banks when I was a senator.”

Sanders responded sarcastically: “Secretary Clinton called them out – oh, they must be really crushed by this.”

(Additional reporting by Megan Cassella in Washington, Emily Flitter and Daniel Trotta in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Howard Goller)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

66 comments

  1. inode_buddha

    Downloading and shared as we speak. Also linked this article to a few friends, asking them to share too. It will definitely spread around.

  2. Arizona Slim

    Let me guess: It disappeared into the same ether as that video of the UCal Davis cop hosing the students with pepper spray.

      1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

        No need to forget it, they made sure it was never seen in the first place.
        It feels like they should pick the next president and then just tell us who it is, would save a whole lot of hoo-haw. 2000 decided by hanging chads and James Baker backroom deals, 2004 decided by SCOTUS, 2008 a total deception/Manchurian candidate, 2012 heavily rigged primaries. 2016 the year people figured out the elections game is 100% rigged, guess we will have to stop lecturing the world about all that “freedom and democracy” stuff.
        And I haven’t heard anyone mention the “no taxation without representation” line, I guess that has gone by the boards too.

  3. inode_buddha

    Getting this onto slashdot somehow will go a long ways if I can pull it off. They tend to have this thing about censorship and the internet over there.

  4. JustAnObserver

    O.k. what private, post debate, poll has show a sudden reduction in Hillary’s lead in NYS ?

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        It’s possible she doesn’t have the ground game to bring her low info, cable news viewers are low info, and house bound senior supporters to the polls. The inevitability claim so might be having an effect too. Her voters might just consider Sanders a slide show and not take time of their day to vote. It’s a Tuesday. What is the commute? Is it too nice of a day to stand in line under fluorescent lights at a school gym?

        Even Democratic type voters who may not care about the nominee might not vote for the inevitability reason too. It’s not worth their time for a contest Hillary has in the bag. If Hillary has won, a voter can stop at the store instead of trying to find that elementary school or community center they never go to.

      2. pat b

        The DNC and the campaigns do real time focus group testing, they have people who are grouped into “Supporters”, “Undecided” and “Opposed” watching and holding a twist dial…

        When they like something, they twist right, when they dislike something they twist left.

        I suspect the realtime focus group just hated her.

      1. inode_buddha

        I sincerely hope you don’t mind. Back in the day, slashdot was the fan when the poop hits it…. they had a lot of pull in the tech community, and millions of curious nerds/geeks.

        1. bob

          Used to follow there more closely. Then beta, then the full blown take over by the dice “keep the ants down” stories. A lot of the audience that are left is very “libertarian” and reactionary in keeping with the keep the ants down theme.

          There are still some good comments, but it’s gone way down hill. Such a shame when HR takes over…

          The system for greatness is there, they just have to get the hell out of the way.

          1. inode_buddha

            I strongly agree. I’ve been on slashdot since before they had logins. I’m recently returning after some life changes a couple yrs out. Franklly I actually miss the old trolls and amazing discussions from the 90’s. FWIW I have the same username here.

    1. Bubba_Gump

      Upvoted interesting, thank you Buddha. It is indeed too bad about slashdot getting crapified by corporate profit extractors.

    1. Plenue

      Oh, The People’s View isn’t gonna like that. They smugly have a countdown timer for his self-imposed deadline (which is still running last I checked). I’m sure they’ll claim he hasn’t provided sufficient documentation.

      1. Tiercelet

        I mocked a breathless Twitter troll by agreeing with her that Sanders should release his LONG FORM TAX CERTIFICATE.

        …sadly, she was so irony-challenged that she promoted the tweet as if I were *actually* agreeing with her…

  5. EmilianoZ

    It’s probably Sanders himself who asked Reuters to pull the article. He was probably very unhappy with their interpretation of his ad. The ad is not about Hillary. She is not named. We know she makes more than $200,000 per speech. The real target of the ad is probably some generic politician, most likely a Reps. Many politicians can command $200,000 per hour. Reps are more likely to oppose the $15 minimum wage than Dems. I dont know what Reuters’ agenda is but they might unwittingly get Sanders in trouble with the Dem hierarchy. Not nice.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Oh, come on. This ad is clearly about Hillary. Anyone in the US will tell you that. The article was positive about the ad. And Sanders has been suffering from a lack of any notice in the media, positive or negative, until late. Why would anyone want an political plug like that removed.

      In fact, VERY few speakers command over $100,000. Krugman gets $150,000-$200,000. No way would anyone pay that for Cruz, he’d be $25,000 tops. The Donald has not given political speeches to Wall Street; you can be sure with all the oppo, someone would have made an issue of it by now. Among other things, paying money to have one client of banks speak to other clients tends to piss them off (as in why him not me?). And Trump isn’t disciplined enough to be a paid speaker. He wings it, which isn’t what people in that staid world like.

    2. diptherio

      they might unwittingly get Sanders in trouble with the Dem hierarchy

      Wha???? Pretty sure Sanders has been on the outs with the Dem hierarchy every since….forever.

    3. flora

      oh, pshaw.
      This ad is on Sander’s facebook page. Meaning he wants people to see it. He is running in this primary race against Hillary.
      Reuter’s got their chain yanked.

    4. Knute Rife

      1. No way.
      2. Sure it was aimed at some generic politician. Some generic, DLC politician with the initials “HRC.”
      3. He can’t hack off the DNC more than he already has by interfering with the nomination of the sixth consecutive, DLC-spawned, hold your nose and vote presidential candidate.
      4. Don’t know if an HRC concern troll or just stupefyingly naive.

  6. Yata

    It’s interesting to watch how these things “disappear” from mainstream media. Reuters can be seen as succumbing to the sponsors capture(?), just as numerous other mainstream publications will.
    One such story was one of the first op-eds submitted by Larry Summers, years back. In it he proposes that consumers could spend their way out of the recession. Good luck retrieving that op-ed.
    And, yes, the scoochy bounce between the US and UK editions isn’t a recent feature.

  7. AnEducatedFool

    Thank you for sharing this information. Corporate Media is either ignoring last night’s debate or they are fawning over Clinton’s “deft handling” of Sanders. I do not know what debate they were watching but it was clear that Sanders won the debate and the audience.

    1. Pespi

      Corporate media would have no reason to exist if it wasn’t telling us that up is down and left is right

    2. pretzelattack

      similar goings on in the gore bush race in 2000, as documented, sometimes obsessively, by the daily howler.

  8. Bas

    Just for fun I posted a link in comments in a couple of ABC News articles concerning Bernie and they were promptly removed. I have posted links there before and nothing happened to them. It does seem odd.

    1. Bas

      It looks like the URL has an “R” at the end now and goes to the Apprentices story page. but the really odd thing is, when you cut and paste the address line, the “R” disappears in the pasted link. It is still there to be seen in the address line, however. this is a new one on me.

    2. Yves Smith Post author

      The Sanders story was published this AM. The Trump story was from last night.

      More important, when you Google the Sanders headline, you get the Trump story, or a blurb to the Sanders story in Google’s cache, but the URL goes to the Trump story.

      If the Sanders story were still on Reuters, a Google search on the headline should find it. It takes only 2-4 hours for a site like mine to have a new story indexed on Google, and I would assume Google indexes articles way faster from big sites like Reuters than little sites like NC.

      This looks like Reuters yanked the story but someone tried covering the tracks with a URL redirect to the Trump story.

  9. diptherio

    Looks like you stumbled across them while they were in the act of hiding the body. Can’t say I’m surprised. Would you expect any less from our corporate media?

  10. inode_buddha

    There’s a bit of protest on FB also, about CNN editing out a standing ovation for Sanders

  11. knowbuddhau

    Thanks, Yves, sharing widely aye. And thanks, inode_buddha, I’m looking it up. Busting propaganda is by far my favorite thing to do on the intertubes.

  12. steelhead

    Yves:
    This is probably the reason Reuters pulled the article:

    Meet Sherry Brydson, Canada’s Richest Woman

    A longtime activist and entrepreneur, she owns the biggest single stake in the family fortune

    Sherry Brydson, Canada’s richest woman

    The biggest single stake in Woodbridge—the holding company that contains the Thomson Family’s tremendous wealth—is owned by Sherry Brydson, the only child of Irma Thomson, one of Roy Thomsons’s two daughters. Her 23% share in the company, along with her other business interests, puts her net worth at an estimated $6.6 billion.

    I cannot confirm, but it would appear that both Sherry and Hillary have similar interests…

  13. rufus magister

    As of this time, The FirstPost version is still available. I live in the Delaware Valley, we’ve been seeing Sanders’ commercials here of late, prior to the Penna. primary. Very tough on Wall St.

  14. rufus magister

    And what looks like the original Reuters article here.

    Glad to see an old legacy service like Netscape/Compuserve still kicking it.

  15. timbers

    Epic fail.

    Epic Epic Fail by Bernie Sanders.

    Bernie didn’t say “Wall Street Banks Shower Hillary Clinton with $200,000″…

    He said Wall Street Banks Shower Washington Politicians. Politicians….like Bush? Romney? Is Bush running against Bernie?

    Would Trump be so stupid as to not name Hillary?

    Epic Epic fail by Bernie Sanders.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      The ad isn’t for the anti Hillary or pro Sanders crowd.

      If he hits Hillary too hard, her supporters will defend her even if the hate any politician just like Hillary and will conclude Sanders is mean.

      The ad produced by Sanders allows those same Hillary type supporters and fence sitters to conclude, “politicians who take money are bad. Hillary takes money, therefore she is bad. I need to support Sanders. I’m smart because I watch the West Wing and rag on Sarah Palin.” People like to feel involved.

  16. Circanow

    The vid endlessly scrolls on your site now, but at bottom right of vid, just click on the YouTube logo, and watch on YouTube site. It’s worth it!

  17. allan

    Oh Reuters, how could you?

    And UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi is wondering what she has to do to get this kind of service.

  18. Torsten

    And for readers like me, who came in late, it is worth noting that Reuters pulled the left hook before they pulled the left hook: they did not include Bernie’s punch line, italicized below:

    When Clinton claimed, as she always does, that she “called out” the big banks, Sanders replied with sarcasm that actually stung: “Secretary Clinton called them out, my goodness—they must have been really crushed by this. And was this before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements?”

    Googling the punchline gives an interesting overview of which media outlets were allowed to deliver the punchline.

    1. direction

      oooh, very nice. i missed hearing the debate so i’m glad you mentioned this. that punchline does make his position so much stronger, and as usual, the media is portraying him as weak. thanks for pointing out the google results. you are so right. google both sentences and see the difference!

      1. Cononymous Award

        It’s worth tracking down the video just to see the look on HRC’s face when he lands that blow. Priceless.

  19. thoughtful person

    Very interesting to watch what and how stories get reported, or not, and how and when “mistakes” get corrected.

    Perhaps a Reuters underling published the story without the usual oversight? Hopefully they don’t get fired…

    Not defending Clinton’s campaign, but I suspect it takes more than a call from Bill or Hillary to remove a Reuters story (or edit a CNN video). Steelhead suggested one of the Reuters owners – possibly, however we see this sort of treatment of Sanders (silence mostly) across corporate media. At most the internal pollsters / the campaign called for some help from top donors.

    I’d put my 2 cents on the largest financial backers of the Clinton campaign, including the PACs of course… Other likely places to look would be those who will benefit from the Clinton presidency. The 0.01%, and the largest corps dependent on gov’t contracts and subsidies, such as the MIC, and our banker friends per chance? The usual suspects iow…

      1. Cononymous Award

        How to Hack an Election — Pay attention to the methods . . . HRC’s press people have ever tipped their hand by referring to bots, but in their typical way of smearing the opposition.

        Makes one wonder. This line in particular is eyebrow raising, “On the question of whether the U.S. presidential campaign is being tampered with, he is unequivocal. ‘I’m 100 percent sure it is,’ he says.”

        Paid comment spam by HRC campaign is another not-so-closeted tactic, and very transparent. Reddit has a few references to these gigs.

      2. thoughtful person

        Thanks for the links. I remember that story from Gawker now. So yes, I agree that the HRC campaign would have been all over the Reuters story.

        However, it’s also likely that Reuters heard from a few sources that they want the story reinstated.

        Why do the news organizations listen and act on the requests of the HRC campaign, but not others?

        More than the campaign’s requests alone are involved. I just don’t think what the campaign alone can offer a Reuters editor to pull a story is enough to explain the behavior.

        So yes, I agree the campaign would be the ones to contact Reuters, but at some point Reuters has heard that they need to follow orders when they come from certain entities and disregard the rest.

  20. Russell

    I read on critical_me, or something like that, that there had been a Sanders rally with 48,000 people attending on the 13th. Little coverage got to my brain of this from NPR, or anywhere else. Here I saw a report that indicated that Sanders economic plans were workable. Of course nothing works if you don’t believe in it. The US is well fractured.
    The Monuments of Monument Row and all throughout former C.S.A. States have done great work keeping the C.S.A. and KKK going. Flag licenses and the statues mean go away you Yankee.
    Picked up Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston.
    My speaking fee is a minimum of 3 grand plus travel and either my wife who acts as my nurse, or another aide. Transcendian is where to decide if you want to see me life. I can weather heckling.
    Plan of mine is just to start a nation of airports. You have to look for me too.

  21. Benedict@Large

    Off topic (though maybe not) …

    I’ve heard that Bill Clinton’s “foundation” has about $150 million in it. What is that money being used for? Other than an occasional mention that it’s there, no one seems to be interested in this.

    The reason I’m asking is because $150 million will buy a lot of influence. It certainly could influence, say, super delegates, or perhaps maybe news media executives; that sort of thing.

    And of course there’s the question of why anyone would give Bill this kind of money. It’s not like there’s any lack of charities and foundations available. Why Bill’s?

    Why isn’t anyone following this trail of crumbs?

    1. Vatch

      I think this has come up before; you seem to be understating the wealth of the Clinton Foundation.

      The foundation has received a lot more than $150 million in its years of existence. Here’s their amended 2013 IRS form 990:

      https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinton_foundation_report_public_2013_amended.pdf

      Line 20 of the first page shows total assets of $277 million (net assets of $247 million). During the 2013 fiscal year they received just under $150 million ($142.8 million), but their total receipts are far above $150 million.

      But wait! Now it looks like I’m the one who’s understating their wealth. See this:

      https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinton_foundation_report_public_2014.pdf

      On page 6 of the document (page 2 of the auditor’s report), we see that at the end of 2014, their total assets were $439,505,295! Admittedly, their net assets were “only” $371,958,668. There’s also a discrepancy in the end of 2013 assets between the two documents. Maybe that’s because one uses a calendar year, and the other uses a non-calendar fiscal year, but I’m not sure.

      It’s very good that you’re bringing this to people’s attention. The Clintons can influence a lot of people with this money, and the squillionaires who donated to the foundation have enormous influence over the Clintons.

Comments are closed.