--- title: Hillary Clinton: Jokes About Private Email and Press Relationship description: At a dinner honoring the winner of The Robin Toner Prize. canonical: https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/ author: Zeke Miller article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-24T00:25:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T05:22:59.900Z article:section: Politics og:title: Clinton Jokes About Private Email and 'Complicated' Press Relationship og:description: At a dinner honoring the winner of the Robin Toner Prize. og:url: https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb92d2079bb734a92/698784e535ba6f80f4c07b17/hillary-clinton9.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Hillary Clinton Speaks At Political Journalism Awards Ceremony og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Clinton Jokes About Private Email and 'Complicated' Press Relationship twitter:description: At a dinner honoring the winner of the Robin Toner Prize. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb92d2079bb734a92/698784e535ba6f80f4c07b17/hillary-clinton9.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Clinton Jokes About Private Email and 'Complicated' Press Relationship by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Mar 24, 2015 12:25 AM UTC  Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at an award ceremony for the 2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting March 23, 2015 in Washington, DC. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at an award ceremony for the 2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting March 23, 2015 in Washington, DC.Win McNamee—Getty Images by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Mar 24, 2015 12:25 AM UTC Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked on Monday about her famously contentious relationship with the press and her private email account. Just weeks before Clinton is set to make her 2016 presidential candidacy official, she appeared at dinner honoring longtime Washington _Post_ correspondent Dan Balz, the winner of the Robin Toner Prize, an award from Syracuse University for political reporters. “An evening with a room full of political reporters,” Clinton quipped after taking the stage, “I thought to myself, what could possibly go wrong?” In an understatement, she added, “My relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated.” “I am all about new beginnings,” she said. “A new grandchild. A new hairstyle. A new email account. A new relationship with the press,” she added. “No more secrecy, no more zone of privacy … After all what good did that do for me?” Clinton praised Toner, the former New York _Times_ corespondent who covered her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign and died in 2008, saying that in a fractured and more ideological media environment, “We need more Robin Toners.” “We rely even more on reporters to try to get us out of the echo chambers we all inhabit,” she said. “We need more than ever smart, fair-minded journalists.” Clinton received a standing ovation from the journalist-heavy crowd. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/"},"headline":"Clinton Jokes About Private Email and 'Complicated' Press Relationship","datePublished":"2015-03-24T00:25:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T05:22:59.900Z","description":"At a dinner honoring the winner of the Robin Toner Prize","url":"https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/","keywords":["2016 Election","2016 Election topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb92d2079bb734a92/698784e535ba6f80f4c07b17/hillary-clinton9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Zeke Miller","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb92d2079bb734a92/698784e535ba6f80f4c07b17/hillary-clinton9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hillary Clinton Speaks At Political Journalism Awards Ceremony","caption":"Hillary Clinton Speaks At Political Journalism Awards Ceremony","creditText":"Win McNamee—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/2016-election/","name":"2016 Election"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3755497/clinton-jokes-press-emails/","name":"Clinton Jokes About Private Email and 'Complicated' Press Relationship"}}]}] ```