Kurtz asserted little media attention to Wash. Post report on Obama's PAC, but he omitted reported problem with article

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asserted that Obama's “fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's,” citing as evidence a November 30 Post article claiming that “Obama's Hopefund Inc. distributed more than $180,000 in donations to political groups and candidates in the early presidential voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.” But Kurtz did not note that the retired Federal Election Commission chief counsel quoted in the article said he was quoted “out of context” and that the “facts as played out in the Washington Post piece are not exactly what I was told. ... I was assuming there was more.”

In a December 19 article examining the media's respective treatment of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL), Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asserted that Obama's “fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's.” Kurtz cited as evidence a November 30 article by Post staff writer John Solomon, which reported that “Obama's Hopefund Inc. distributed more than $180,000 in donations to political groups and candidates in the early presidential voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.” Kurtz wrote that the story's “suggestion that he [Obama] might be buying support received no attention on the network newscasts.” However, Kurtz did not note that retired Federal Election Commission chief counsel Lawrence Noble, who was quoted in the Post article questioning the legality of Hopefund's donations, later reportedly said Solomon quoted him “out of context” and that the “facts as played out in the Washington Post piece are not exactly what I was told. ... I was assuming there was more,” as Media Matters for America noted.

In the November 30 article, Solomon quoted Noble saying of Hopefund's donations: “I think this is something the commission should look at. If the money was, in fact, used to help the campaign, was requested by the campaign and coordinated with the campaign, then it could be considered an in-kind contribution.” After the story's publication, Politico senior political writer Ben Smith reported on November 30 that “Noble [...] says his quote was 'out of context.' ” From Smith's November 30 blog post:

UPDATE: Lawrence Noble, quoted in the Washington Post as sharply critical of Obama's practice, says his quote was “out of context.”

“The facts as played out in the Washington Post piece are not exactly what I was told,” he said. “I was assuming there was more.”

From the story:

“I think this is something the commission should look at. If the money was, in fact, used to help the campaign, was requested by the campaign and coordinated with the campaign, then it could be considered an in-kind contribution,” Lawrence Noble, the FEC's retired chief counsel, said.

However, he said the level of coordination discussed in the story -- advice from Hildebrand and lawyer Bob Bauer -- doesn't rise to the level he had thought he was discussing with that quote, given that the FEC has established a “legal fiction” that leadership PACs like Hope Fund aren't affiliates of the campaign, but do serve the interests of the candidate.

That doesn't mean that the practice couldn't raise questions in ways that haven't been ruled out by the reporting here.

“I don't see any allegation that the campaign had a whole strategy here, that they were solely for the purpose of getting endorsements,” Noble said.

But he said it was “generally understood” that one reason for a candidate to contribute to another politician through a leadership PAC “is who will be helpful to him or her.”

From Kurtz's December 19 Washington Post column:

After weeks of bad news, Hillary Clinton and her strategists hoped that winning the endorsement of Iowa's largest newspaper last weekend might produce a modest bump in their media coverage.

But on Sunday morning, they awoke to upbeat headlines about their chief Democratic rival: “Obama Showing New Confidence With Iowa Sprint,” said the New York Times. “Obama Is Hitting His Stride in Iowa,” said the Los Angeles Times. And on Monday, Clinton aides were so upset about a contentious “Today” show interview that one complained to the show's producer.

Clinton's senior advisers have grown convinced that the media deck is stacked against them, that their candidate is drawing far harsher scrutiny than Barack Obama. And at least some journalists agree.

[...]

For nearly a year, the New York senator was widely depicted as the inevitable nominee. But now many media accounts are casting her recent dip in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls as a disaster in the making.

“Slipping Away?” said a headline on ABC's “Good Morning America.” “Hillary Clinton's campaign is teetering on the brink,” [Howard] Fineman wrote in Newsweek. CBS's Jim Axelrod said her operation is “reeling.” The Los Angeles Times said she is facing her “most serious crisis.” And a banner headline on the Drudge Report asked: “Is It the End?”

When Clinton's New Hampshire co-chairman resigned last week after raising the issue of Obama's adolescent drug use, the issue itself received scant treatment in the media because Obama had disclosed it in his 1995 autobiography. “He has been able, by luck or planning, to control his own story, because he wrote it first,” Fineman says.

The Illinois senator's fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's. When The Washington Post reported last month that Obama used a political action committee to hand more than $180,000 to Democratic groups and candidates in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the suggestion that he might be buying support received no attention on the network newscasts. The Clinton team is convinced that would have been a bigger story had it involved the former first lady.

There was also a lack of media pickup when the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported that an Obama aide had sat down next to him and “wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton's post-presidential sex life.”

When NBC's David Gregory interviewed Hillary Clinton Monday during her round of morning-show appearances, he briefly noted her endorsement by the Des Moines Register before asking what had happened to her momentum. He pressed six times for a reaction to her husband's telling PBS's Charlie Rose that the country would “roll the dice” if it elected Obama. “So you're choosing not to answer that question,” Gregory finally said.