It's hard enough to suffer the media when they call Congress crooks. To see them shoveling it in from the very interest groups they accuse Congress of selling out to and then shuck and jive like a politician caught in a funny land deal, really sticks in the craw. When Hillary Rodham Clinton made her hundred thousand in the commodities market, she at least had to put up a thousand of her own. Pay and perks are not the only matters on which elected people think journalists need to look in the mirror. Another is the question of spin.
Reporters love to catch politicians spinning their way out of binds.
But it takes one to know one. People in public life know that journalists often have the story written, mentally at least, before they start reporting. They know when they're being set up, and they've all had the experience of being milked for quotes to fill in the blanks. When I worked for Ralph Nader, I got a call one day from a Post reporter who was doing a story on the household moving industry, which I had looked into for one of the Nader books. I answered his questions with long discussions on the structure of the industry and so forth.