An excerpt:
Some of the nation’s most enduring memories of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — memories she would happily erase — were etched on television more than a decade ago: She didn’t stay home and bake cookies in her marriage. She wasn’t “some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette.” The headband. The hairstyles.
On Saturday, one week into her presidential campaign, the threat of a new, unflattering image surfaced: MSNBC used a microphone to capture Mrs. Clinton singing the national anthem in Des Moines. Her voice was, shall we say, off key. The recording was quickly downloaded to YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, and the Drudge Report — no friend of Mrs. Clinton — was steering readers to watch it. (By Tuesday afternoon, more than 800,000 had.)
Clinton advisers found out about the YouTube video within minutes, and their campaign war room made a calculated decision: not to respond at all. They did not want to draw news media attention to the video; nor did they want to upstage their preferred news of the day, Mrs. Clinton’s debut in Iowa.
“Senator Clinton’s candidacy is not premised on her ability to carry a tune,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser and war room manager. “We did not see it as a significant threat.”
Twenty-four hours later, no news outlets had made a fuss about the video, and the Clinton team privately declared victory.
The video clip may have been trivial, but the brief episode surrounding it illustrated how visual and audio technologies like video streaming have the potential to drive political news in unexpected directions, and how White House candidates are aggressively monitoring and trying to master them.
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