http://www.cjr.org/first_person/podesta_emails_journalists_dinner.php

Quote:
This practice continues unabated, as made clear in a recent batch of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. The meals may be smaller and the settings less lavish, but the goals remain the same: for a person in a position of power, in this case Hillary Clinton, to groom a friendlier press corps. Non-journalists, as well as conservative outlets, reacted with anger and incredulity at emails—the Clinton campaign has not disputed their validity—that showed the campaign setting up off-the-record dinners and cocktails with John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and Joel Benenson, her chief strategist. (The Huffington Post had reported on the Podesta meeting previously.) Journalists mostly shrugged at the revelations.

Their dismissal is misguided. The emails may highlight business as usual, but it is a business practice that has helped stoke distrust of the press in 2016 and has propelled a narrative, pushed by Donald Trump, that the mainstream media is in the bag for Clinton. The implications of that will linger long after Election Day.
Bolding by me, for emphasis.

Lots of other good stuff in the article, plus one mistake.

Quote:
Since WikiLeaks did not target Trump, we do not know the extent to which his campaign tried to court the press, though based on the ways he either tried to curtail access or denigrate reporters, it’s unclear whether they were ever extended the same dinnertime courtesy.


Wikileaks targets anyone and everything. Given their history, there is no reason to believe that they wouldn't have published Trump documents.

Maybe some enterprising reporter should have obtained some, and leaked them.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)