From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
There are lots of ways to follow up on a story–you can just wholeheartedly print what your sources turn over to you, which can be a bit one-sided depending upon your sources. You can sift through all the data until you have a steaming mess of nearly unintelligible, but fair and balanced “both sides” journalism. Or you could actually follow up on a story, data point by data point, until a bigger picture emerges, thereby doing the journalism thing in a somewhat more pure form. In other words, it’s not enough to describe what something “looks like” or “could be construed to be”–the trick is to arrive at what actually “is”.
For which, it helps to understand what “is” means. Is a donation to a charity that does not pay a salary to Madame Clinton the same thing as donating either to her or her campaign? Nope. Do the aims of the Clinton Foundation and the goals of certain arms of the State Department have overlap? Insofar as making a positive difference in the lives of people–yes. It might help to understand what the Clinton Foundation does.