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January 14, 2008

Comments

Brad Jacobson

MSNBC Driving Traffic to Clinton Campaign Donations

Manijeh

I am a viewer of MSNBC but if this is true then we will boycott MSNBC. THis is WRONG!

Woody Peacock

I can't believe anyone is surprised by this!

KISSman

Will Media Matters report on this? Probably not. They are in love with Hillary.

Tyler

Hillary needs to be stopped for sake of ruining the democrats chances this election year; it's the Dems' year but if Hillary is nominated she will drive independents and moderates away to the right. But I checked the link and it just takes you to Hillary's homepage - which just happens to have a big contribute request. If it only said something about contributing near the bottom then you guys wouldn't be writing this.

Brad Jacobson

Tyler, I assure you I would've written about this regardless of what was on Hillary's homepage. And I would have a problem with this if Obama, Edwards or any of the GOP candidates had the same MSNBC link jumping to their homepages. It just happens to go to Clinton's. Thanks for your comment.

Jennifer

Mike Gravel has done more for this country then ANY of the candidates including Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. I suggest you vote for one of the 3 if you want change.

If not, expect hell on earth. Our next president could easily be the next dictator IF it's one of the top tier candidates.

Wake up Sheeple.

David

Ron paul '08!

greenpagan

Let all the poisons in the mud hatch out.

And then...THE REVOLUTION!

====

Ron Mwangaguhunga

This does not look good for MSNBC.

Pete

As Obama supporter, I think this reporter missed the point.The page showing is Hillary homepage. NOT her fundraising page, even thus it has a fundraising button on it.but,that's her homepgae forgod sake. I'm not a big fan for Hillary but,this repporting is wrong. Every news outlet out there always linked the sources link on there page. In this case I believe it's what happened..

Jim Ray

Hi there, my name is Jim Ray, I'm a concepts producer at msnbc.com, which hosts content for Meet the Press. I found your link via a post on our sister site, Newsvine.

I'm hoping I can clear up some confusion: as you noted, the link on the Meet the Press front actually points to Hillary Clinton's official website, hillaryclinton.com. Clinton, like every presidential candidate running right now, has a rather prominent "donate here" image on her homepage, presumably to encourage supporters to donate to her campaign. This doesn't mean that Meet the Press or msnbc.com is encouraging our readers to donate to the Clinton campaign, we're simply linking to her official site. As best I can figure, a link is by no means an endorsement, nor should it be implied as such. I'm working on figuring out why the text was linked as such, what our policy is for linking to official campaigns, and whether this has been a pattern with other candidates. It should be obvious, though, that msnbc.com has no more control over what the Clinton campaign posts on their homepage than what MediaBloodhound posts on theirs.

As an aside, I sure hope this post wasn't an intentional attempt to sensationalize a non-story. For one, the screenshots used seem to take a bit of creative licensing with the crops. Political impartiality is something we all take very seriously and I would hope that this is a simple misunderstanding, not a hamhanded attempt to gin up controversy or pageviews.

Jim
[email protected]

Jim Ray

Oh, also, I wanted to say that you bring up an excellent point about the fact that the text is completely lacking in context - I wouldn't necessarily expect a candidate's name to link directly to her campaign site. I'll work on getting that fixed.

Victoria

Sure enough... I just went there and when you click on the link (You think you are going to go to the story itself) it takes you directly to her donation page. Fair and Unbiased my behind!

Randy Stearns

The link to Senator Clinton’s campaign Web site is not unprecedented. In fact, "Meet the Press" has provided such links to each of the candidates who have been guests on the program over the past several months. Mitt Romney, Barak Obama, Ron Paul, John McCain and Mike Huckabee have all been given the same treatment when those candidates appeared on "Meet the Press." As in those cases, the links should not be construed as implying any kind of endorsement of the candidates, nor can "Meet the Press" or msnbc.com control how those candidates organize their sites, (all of which feature fund-raising pitches, of course).

Edmund Dante Hamilton

Hi Jim Ray @ MSNBC.com

Thanks for checking into this. I am sure interested in what the official word is from MSNBC on your policy concerning links to the donation page of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Edmund Dante Hamilton

Brad Jacobson

Mr. Stearns, if you can provide evidence that, as you say, each candidate was treated exactly the same as Sen. Clinton on your website, I will be glad to issue a correction. I and others have looked back at those interviews on your site and have found no evidence to support that was the case. Even your Concepts Producer, Jim Ray, who commented here as well, finds it unusual that Sen. Clinton's name was linked, without any context, in the headline. I've sent you a more in-depth email. Thanks for your help in verifying.

Brad Jacobson

Mr. Ray, thanks for the info and for looking into this.

I can assure you this wasn't "an intentional attempt to sensationalize a non-story." That's not what I do here. Regarding your comment about the screenshots used seeming to "take a bit of creative licensing with the crops," I'm not sure what you're implying. If you're insinuating the screenshots I took changed the reality of what I was reporting, that's absolutely not the case.

I'm not sure how to respond to your next statement: "Political impartiality is something we all take very seriously and I would hope that this is a simple misunderstanding, not a hamhanded attempt to gin up controversy or pageviews." I guess I'll just say that, no, this wasn't an attempt to "gin up controversy." Though, I have to say, Jim, what does sound hamhanded is an executive at MSNBC lecturing me about how "Political impartiality is something we [MSNBC] all take very seriously" while your network is simultaneously appealing a judge's decision to allow one of the 2008 Democratic candidates to appear in your next debate.

Jim Ray

Brad, I'm not going to further debate you on this one. And I'm certainly not going to try to justify the actions and decisions of our corporate parents, a story that we reported on the cover of our own website. I've presented the facts as best I can, I'm sorry they don't square with your preconceptions.

As for proof that we've treated other candidates the same way, I can offer a bit of that, but it's going to require some technical explanation about how our content management system works.

That big area at the top of the front page of sections is called a Grid internally, it's a component that allows us to manage the photos and text in that area of the page. Often times, we'll create a new grid layout for news that doesn't change much, like the weekly booking schedule of Meet the Press. As it so happens, the grid from the week that John McCain was on the show still exists, you can see an unformatted version here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22475064/

(Apologies, you don't appear to allow hyperlinks in your comments)

Now, the CSS that formats this grid isn't available, but you can see that "Sen. John McCain" is linked to McCain's official campaign homepage, which has a big, bright red "Donate" button. Unfortunately, I don't have access to any of the other Grid components that were used for other candidates' appearances on Meet the Press but I've been assured by my colleagues that this is standard procedure.

Furthermore, you still seem to be implying that our links point readers directly to a Clinton campaign donation page, which is patently false. As has been stated by myself and several colleagues at this point, we are linking to the candidate homepage, not directly to a donation page or in any way encouraging readers to donate to candidates. We tend to think that our readers are actually smart enough to figure out that you don't have to click on the "donate" button just to get information.

Brad Jacobson

Jim, I will be addressing your last comment and others in an update posted later today (hopefully) once I have all the information I'm still searching out. For now, I'll just say that in response to "We tend to think that our readers are actually smart enough to figure out that you don't have to click on the "donate" button just to get information," I tend to think my readers are smart enough to figure out it's not that simple.

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