
Today I came across this shocking article published on Politico.com: “Clinton
Campaign Kills Negative Story.” What?! I know some may think I’m naive, but I’m no expert in celebrity or entertainment PR where this publicity move is practiced on a regular basis. According to Politico:
“Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.
So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.”
While this tactic may work for celebrities (and celebrity politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton), healthcare companies: don’t try this at home.
I’ve been in numerous situations where a media outlet is working on a negative story about a company I’ve been representing. Guess what, executives would have loved to bury the story, but they couldn’t. They didn’t have the clout. In fact, if they refused to cooperate or tried to pressure the paper into killing the piece, they would have received a tremendous amount of negative press.
Frankly I’m surprised that the Clinton campaign was even able to get away with it. With the proliferation of political blogs with lots of clout, there are plenty of other ways to get the story out. However, here’s the question: a blogger would have written about it, but would mainstream media sit on it for fear of getting on Clinton’s bad side?
I don’t know the answer to that question. However, as of today, there are numerous bloggers writing about this story. So, it’s spreading. Will it cause the campaign long-term damage? What do you think?

I have been watching for decades now the attempts of various people in your country who attempt to promote a form of Universal Health Care based upon the Canadian Model. In support of Universal Health Care I will simply state that on a personal level of care here in Canada, if I/we had to pay for Health Care received on behalf of our sons we would have owed a Factual Total of Twenty Million Dollars. If this same level of care had been provided in the United States, we would have had to stop payments after the first Million and both sons would have died due to our inability to no longer pay for prohibitive Health Care Costs. The fact that you have fourty million people in your country who simply receive no health care at all should tell you something very bad is wrong with the American Dreams system. Good Luck in your endeavours to achieve true Health Care Affordalble to All Americans, regardless of Station, Income, Status or level of pecking order placement.
Posted by: Arthur | September 26, 2007 2:49 PM | Permalink to Comment