Media In 2014: Who Is Saul Alinsky And Why Should We Care?

By Mollie Hemingway
September 22, 2014

Last night the Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman broke yet another story about Hillary Clinton by doing journalism any major media outlet could do but, for some reason, doesn’t. The Beacon looked through archives at UT-Austin and discovered correspondence between Clinton and Saul Alinsky.

Now if you’re a moderately well-read person, you know who Saul Alinsky is. You know that he wrote the book — influential particularly for folks on the left — Rules for Radicals. And if you were born before a few years ago, you know that Clinton has always been a tad touchy regarding her ties to Alinsky. When she was First Lady and it was discovered that her senior thesis was written on Alinsky’s controversial tactics, someone — no idea who — gave her college the idea to seal her thesis from public view. She’s largely downplayed his influence in the years since. And Clinton’s ties to radicals are interesting because she is now running for president, obviously.


The right has done a lot of journalism on Saul Alinsky’s influence of mainstream Democratic politicians such as President Barack Obama. This media coverage has been largely mocked or ignored. While conservative media outlets across the spectrum covered this influence in 2007-2008 — special recognition should go to Stanley Kurtz, who spent months digging up interesting stuff in Chicago, and David Freddoso, who also chronicled it well. Conservative reporters’ knowledge of Alinsky has helped them see when Alinsky tactics — which are ostensibly ideologically neutral — have been used on the right as well. But in 2007-2008, the mainstream media was too busy fluffing Obama or sending dozens of reporters to investigate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s uterus or dig through her trash. (Remember when the Associated Press had 11 reporters fact check Sarah Palin’s book? Yeah ….)

The Beacon gets the story out showing that Hillary Clinton had a much stronger relationship with the radical — and higher regard for his work — than her one-paragraph dismissal of him in her memoir would indicate. I know, all you non-media types are shocked that a Clinton would obfuscate.

OK, so let’s go to Twitter to see what political journalists had to say about the matter. It’s fascinating. Gabriel Malor took a screen shot of a Los Angeles Times political reporter and a Politico reporter pooh-poohing the matter:

Read more: The Federalist