This is antithetical to all journalistic ethics and in the Washington Press Corps it is the rule, not the exception. Remember the “JournoList” scandal from 2008?

Fox:

Internal documents made public on Sunday revealed a reporter for the New York Times working with Democratic officials to promote Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, with party apparatchiks saying she has “never disappointed” them.

The January 2015 document centering on Clinton’s media strategy, released by the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, was describing Maggie Haberman, who worked for Politico but who moved to the Times that month.

“We are all in agreement that the time is right [to] place a story with a friendly journalist in the coming days that positions us a little more transparently while achieving [our] goals,” said the memo, which was first published by The Intercept.

“We have [had] a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year,” the unsigned document noted. “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. While we should have a larger conversation in the near future about a broader strategy for reengaging the beat press the covers HRC, for this we think we can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie.”

The Intercept reported that metadata pointed to Nick Merrill, the campaign’s press secretary, as the document’s author.