The former executive editor of the New York Times says the media have given Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton a disproportionate amount of scrutiny this election cycle.
“[W]e, for some reason, expect total purity from a woman candidate,” Jill Abramson said Monday on Politico’s “Off Message” podcast.
Ms. Abramson, who was ousted from the New York Times in 2014 after reportedly complaining that her male predecessor received a more generous compensation package, said she did not think her newspaper’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was unfair during her tenure.
“I did not feel, during my regime, that we were giving her way more scrutiny than anyone else,” she said. “Where I think Hillary Clinton faces, you know, certainly more of a burden is that the controversies she’s been in are immediately labeled, you know, Travel-gate or Email-gate… if you actually asked people what about any of these controversies bothers them, they don’t know anything specific about any of them.”
The FBI is investigating the private email server held by Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of State, which Republicans say could have compromised classified information. More than 2,000 emails from her server contained “confidential” information, including 45 that were deemed “secret” and more than 20 labeled as “top secret.”
“The issue, to me, that’s at the crux is that everything that we know that was classified was classified after the fact, after the emails were sent,” Ms. Abramson said. “And so, why is that a big deal?”
Ms. Abramson briefly served as a consultant to former President Bill Clinton during one of his Arkansas campaigns.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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