June 26, 2010

Jeffrey Goldberg says "I've been leaked postings from JournoList before — wonderfully charming things written about me..."

"... I haven't had the opportunity to use them, but would be happy to if the need arose. Why anyone would think that a listserv with 400 people is private is beyond me. It's McChrystal-level naivete."

Ha. And somebody must be scared. He's got your email and he knows how to use it.

John Cole paraphrases, scornfully: "I’m not against using my perch at the Atlantic to publish someone’s private emails to viciously destroy their character and career, but what really bothers me is if someone makes a joke privately!"

The Journolisters — including Cole? — must be desperately trying to discipline each other not to leak. And yet the evidence is — if Goldberg is to be believed — that the leaks have been going on all along. Whenever someone not on the list was talked about, somebody in that 400 may have seen fit to let that person know what was being said. Think of all the reasons you might decide to forward the email. You might know the person being talked about and think they needed to be be alerted about some scurrilous accusations or plans. You might object to what was being said or dislike the person saying it and want to do something about it without drawing attention to yourself.

It's really too late now to get the 400 listmembers into line. Stuff has gone out. People like Goldberg have it and will use it when they decide it's right. You can try, like Cole, to say that using it will be vicious and destructive, but presumably, the email was vicious and destructive, which is probably why it got forwarded! And, anyway, you can't beat that many people into line. In that huge group are some writers who take orders, but there have to be others who are vindictive or careless. Some may be unsuccessful and jealous. Some may believe staunchly that information wants to be free or that a list of 400 is pretty much a public list with no valid restrictions. You can't control them all.

And there is, it seems, a new, smaller list being formed without the dangerous riffraff. The true insiders are determining what the scope of the inner circle is. And the others, the left-behinds? Well, they're sitting on a pile of hot, nasty words written by the cool kids who just shut the clubhouse door on them.

ADDED: Cole responds to this post and I respond to that here.

94 comments:

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Does anyone else get a junior high school vibe out of this whole thing.

Geeze these people need to grow up.

Trooper York said...

See the problem with this list is that every single one of these dweebs was always picked last when we were choosing up sides for dodgeball.

You can't have a team where everybody would be picked last.

Well except for the Knicks. But you know what I mean.

lucid said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
lucid said...

The more I think about this the more I think that Ezra Klein should be fired from WashPo.

Journolist was explicitly an attempt to have a secret conversation in order to coordinate and control a public conversation. It was a complete corruption of journalistic independence in order to advance a leftist agenda.


Klein is espeically guilty because he is the one who got his good friend Weigel a job at WahPo, supposedly because he would be a good person to cover conservatives.

But once again, Klein was just trying to cook the journalistic books. Totally disingenuous and dishonest. He really should go.

Not only should Klein be fired, but newspapers and other media should demand that their writers and editors declare whether or not they participated in the Journolist fraud.

Then readers would know that they are getting coordinated storylines from these "journalists."

Tyrone Slothrop said...

I don't think you can be a journalist without being a back-stabber at heart. How else are you going to weasel yourself into another person's confidence with the purpose of betraying that confidence unless you delight in twisting the knife? My wife was a journalism major in the eighties until she caught on to the duplicitous nature of the game.

By the way, "journalist" is just too dignified a word, and I don't recall ever hearing it used prior to Watergate. I'm going back to using "reporter", at least until there are no reporters left.

As my whimsy leads me.. said...

In a precursor to Journolist, many girls in my 6th grade class made "slam books." These were like journals with different pages, decorated, where they and their friends could write their thoughts about something. the pages were folded diagonally for "privacy." They were being passed around at recess and at lunch. Some got their feelings hurt; others got mad, but mostly it was just something to do. Well, a couple of the girls started passing them around under the desks during class. The teacher caught them, and started reading some of the entries to the whole class. Major embarrassment and no more slam books. Back to the usual gossip.

Toy

Beth said...

DBQ, Junior High it is, all around. Who cares? People talk about each other. I'm uninterested in the people doing the talking and the ones worrying about being talked about. The whole contretemps is just funny.

As my whimsy leads me.. said...

To clarify, each page had a topic: Mrs. Fulton, Leslie, Nancy, Pam, Mr. Hamrick, The Monkees, etc. These would sometimes have something nice written (like in a yearbook) but sometimes the subject would be "slammed."

Toy

Unknown said...

For all those people on the right-hand side of the aisle who said, "Am I crazy, or does it seem like a plot to you, too?"; no, you aren't crazy and, yes, it is a plot.

WV "ditush" Where you go to get a loan for a fanny lift.

lucid said...

The Journolist story may have legs.

Journolist is exactly what makes voters so enraged--a privleged, group of cronies using their privleges to grab power for themselves and to control what everone else--all the dumb "little people"--get.

Ron said...

You wrote "left-behinds" and I thought "left-asses"....and we were both right.

pm317 said...

Nice!! Let the riffraff start venting. {rubbing my hands in glee}

I agree with "lucid".

Journalistic independence and objectivity were compromised -- we saw this clearly in the Dem primary of '08.

Unknown said...

On Ann's journolist, um, I mean comment section, we get to hear about how Andrew Sullivan is a faggot and deserves to die of aids. And Ann nods along is silent agreement. Nice.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Purge them, comrades.

Titus said...

First, how old are these people. Second, who the fuck cares and third why do you care so much?

The rare clumbers and the Indian UK Husband and I are heading to take the boat over to the Vineyard for the night. Definitely tanky weather.

Titus said...

I haven't pinched my morning loaf yet. I went to the throne twice to try and pinch but nothing came out except a couple of really dry farts.

Anonymous said...

Must......keep.......slanting........the.......narration..........

ddh said...

I regret that David Wiegel and General McCrystal lost their jobs because of things they thought were private. Of course, Wiegel's resignation carries hardly any consequence for the rest of us, unlike the General's. Nonetheless, I find it ironic that a journalist was done in by thinking "off the record" meant more than "for later release."

Perhaps we should start a pool on when the first leak appears from the new, smaller, more elite and vetted Journolist.

Trooper York said...

Wow. Downtownlad and Titus both commenting on the same thread.

This topic is bringing out everybody.

traditionalguy said...

Ezra also cares for the"little people" very much, it is just that favored insiders in a group can seldom exceed 5 in number. That is about all that can get a big enough cut of the loot to stay and not leave for better pickings by starting their own group.

garage mahal said...

Geeze these people need to grow up.

The people on the list, or the people not on the list that can't stop talking about the list? Hehe. Too funny.

Jeff said...

Big deal. Journolist merely digitized the Washington cocktail party scene. Nothing substantive will change until the print media understands basic economics.

Good luck with that.

Trooper York said...

And with guys like Goldberg and Klein invovled we should be hearing from Cedarford any moment nonw.

Then the loaf will hit the fan I tell ya.

Bruce Hayden said...

I was thinking this morning about this, and in particular, Weigel, and my thoughts were that these people really are dangerous.

Sure, we have all known that the news was heavily managed from the left (and note the recent revelations of the squashed story on Crazed Sex Poodle AlGore). But that management was important in getting us where we are right now with a socialist, son of a communist, in the White House, trying to spread the wealth around to destroy our economy as fast as he can in order to reduce its inequality.

Looking back, most of the evidence was out there. Obama slipped with the spreading the wealth around, the bitter clinging comments. But the evidence out there was no different than what we are seeing right now. He was totally unqualified for the job. He came from the corrupt Chicago school of politics. He hung around domestic terrorists and Black supremists. His father was a communist. And he followed Alinsky.

Yet, whenever any of this came up, it was immediately and brutally squelched in the MSM. Sure, his campaign had its spin control FAXes and emails that went out to the journalists. But this group helped. And instead of letting the American people know about any of these things, they would immediately change the focus towards whether or not Trig was Sarah Palin's, or her daughter's. Whether she had attended a radical evangelical church years before. That sort of thing.

My gripe with Weigel is that his job was to follow the fringe elements of the right. Never mind that for every fringe group or groupie on the right, there may be a dozen on the left. You just have to look at what is happening right now in Toronto. But that little secret of the left is invariably and brutally crushed. Never mind that pretty much all the violence in the protests about Health Care "Reform" was by SEIU thugs and others on the left. Far more ink and bits were spent pushing the theme of the supposed anti-Black taunts that one time with the CBC members cutting through a Tea Party crowd that one time. Just imagine if the Fairness Doctrine applied to disclosing the left fringe to the extent that this group has gone after the fringe on the right and tried to tie them to Republicans and Tea Party movement.

And note that these people are at the table, and ubiquitous in the Obama Administration. Without any comment from this group of "journalists". Rather, the topic is redirected to whether Sarah Palin has had her breasts augmented.

Titus said...

My Indian/UK husband with really big arms has 4 servants at his home in Bangalore. A cook, a gardener, a maid and a driver. Isn't that fab? They each get paid like $100 american dollars a month. He speaks "Hindish" when speaking with his papa.

Loaf update-third try is a charm.

Did you get your fish boil last night Mary?

Titus said...

Troop I wasn't even picked last.

I was one of the last ones standing and they didn't even call my name. They were already on the field and I just kind of went on a team. The last two or three of us didn't even get "picked".

Group hug.

garage mahal said...

These people think they're cool. Infuriating! Tell us jounolist. WHO ARE YOU AND ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME!?

LOFL

Methadras said...

I"m so not in the clique.

Titus said...

My last name is Lee and they called me Sarah Lee.

It caught on with my family and they started calling me Sarah Lee and Sandy Duncan and Sissy Sally.

Definitely group hug needed.

LonewackoDotCom said...

This episode is also - of course - yet another example of the sheer drooling stupidity of the tea party crowd.

1. Weigel can do far more damage to the tea party movement at HuffPost, TPM, or Salon in that general order. At the WaPo he was constrained; elsewhere he can be free to put damaging stories out there to be re-transmitted by others.

2. The 'partiers are unable to figure out his political inclinations due to their belief that anyone who disagrees with them must be a MARXIST COMMUNIST.

2. My first post on Dave Weigel (like all the others critical of him) was almost four years ago to the day. I've probably left close to two hundred comments on his entries at Reason, TWI, and the WaPo, all trying to discredit him. I can't do that without help, but I didn't get any. Where were the teaparty types all during the period from four years ago until just a few years ago? AWOL as usual.

Bob_R said...

All over America, conservative parodists are tearing their hair out trying to come up with something funnier than the actual story. I wish them luck.

Gahrie said...

OK...

stay with me here...

I've just figured out that Titus is performance art written by Patrick Buchanan.

lonetown said...

What amazes me is what pissy little whiners they are. EVen in provate!

Lincolntf said...

The "Tea Partiers" aren't reacting exactly the way you would expect them to? And they're not doing what you think is smart? Golly gee whiz, LoneWhack, maybe that's because you have absolutely no idea what they think or who they are.

Wiegel, like a typical pussbag Lib, will moan and whine about being a victim for the next couple weeks, and then he'll be flushed down the memory hole by the "established" media.

EnigmatiCore said...

In America, you don't control the message. The message controls you.

Trooper York said...

Sorry about that Titus. But it was just the wrong game. I bet they would pick you right away on Project Runway!

Anonymous said...

"Journolist was explicitly an attempt to have a secret conversation in order to coordinate and control a public conversation. It was a complete corruption of journalistic independence in order to advance a leftist agenda."

He should be fired for this?

Sir, he's lauded inside the institution for creating this. He's a star inside the Post.

It was a masterstroke of genius. It's purpose was always to "coordinate" the Posts' agenda with the Democrat Party agenda and not be too damn subtle about what was going on because anyone who cares about these things already knows what's going on.

If you don't like it, then don't buy the fucking Post. If conservatives don't like it, they can freely purchase Post stock, fire its corrupt editors and hire new reporters.

Bitching, however, isn't an option. They may be playing at a junior varsity level ... but the game is serious.

Conservatives need to buy these newspaper companies. Fire these fucking liberals. Unemploy them. Destroy them. And then hire conservative journalists.

Or shut the fuck up. Money talks. Whinging walks.

I'll gladly edit the Post and make it the nation's premiere conservative newspaper just as soon as a conservative billionaire decides he cares about the fucking United States of America and spends his money defending it.

Or he can have his billions stolen by these fucking liberals.

Where's the conservative will to fight to the death?

Larry J said...

Remember several weeks ago when some female Harvard Law student was grilled over some remarks in a leaked email. IIRC, it had something to do with the possibility of genetic causes for the difference IQ levels between the races. She ended up having to apologize for not being politically correct while there was much harumphing and tut-tutting at Harvard. It was also discussed here at Ann's place. Didn't it turn out that the person who leaked the email was another female law student who wanted to get even due to a dispute over a guy.

This is only "news" because it exposes so-called journalists for the bias frauds they really are. Not that anyone with half a brain thought they were anything but left-wing scumbags in the first place.

Bruce Hayden said...

To reinforce my point above: The overlooked story from the Weigel kerfuffle:

"Weigel used JournoList for exactly the purpose its critics suspected it would be used, i.e., to attempt to shape media coverage for the benefit of the Left. And he did it more than once...

The second example is particularly striking because Weigel was explcitly urging his fellow J-Listers to engage in what Weigel’s buddies and fellow travelers like to call “epistemic closure,” to operate as a closed media ecosystem that excludes competing political narratives. (It’s arguably there in the first example, too.)
"

PatHMV said...

Cole is a complete moron. A 400-member ANYTHING is not "private."

And I think the hypocrisy of any journalist complaining that "private" remarks are printed is just mind-boggling. Secret? Got to publish that! Could cause harm to the country's efforts to stop terrorists from killing us? Public's right to know! Sexual scandal? Let's camp outside in the bushes to see where he's sticking it!

Screw Juan Cole. If anybody on the Journolist had true integrity, he'd upload the entire thing to an archive right now.... I suggest Wikileaks.

lemondog said...

Geeze these people need to grow up.

Been thinking as much from the first, but then, when so many of these 'journalists' are around the 30 year old mark and under, what can one expect. What life experience has molded many of them?

What is taught in journalism class? It seems to me objectivity is paramount but how does one remain objective cloistered with only like-minded types?

Why does any one need to go to school to study journalism?

Not surprising newspaper circulation is in decline along with network news viewership.

traditionalguy said...

Bruce Hayden... Thanks for bringing it back up. The baby Trigg is probably what caused Sarah Palin's need for her breast implants, thus proving that she is Trigg's mom. And that also brings to mind birth certificates ...oh nevermind. Mass distractions are like 5th columnist Presidents whose talent is that they exclude a real American from being our President.

Lincolntf said...

"Screw Juan Cole. If anybody on the Journolist had true integrity, he'd upload the entire thing to an archive right now.... I suggest Wikileaks."

Best idea I've heard yet.
I wonder (not really) what any one of the 400 members of JoList would do if they had the opportunity to read/publish an endless supply of Tea Partiers colluding to screw the public out of information? At least one of them would claim the public's "right to know", right?
Well that someone can strike a blow of their own by posting the whole shebang.
As a side note, the tide of history is turning and these Lefty nutjobs are on the way out. Wouldn't be the worst career move for one of them to get out of the MSM/Dem Party-fluffing business while it's still a novel concept.

Roger J. said...

I am not one who is disturbed by journalist. The media slant is to the left and were there not a journalist,we still have the nyt to set the agenda.

If journalist did not exist the NYT editorial page would set the agenda--

Now I think that particular game has played out because there just to many sources out there who can break stories--it is like Hobbes state of nature where the life of man is nasty solitary, poor, brutish and short.

victoria said...

This assumes, Bob, that the right wing press has a sense of humor. They are only, from what I can see, out to destroy journalism and attack, attack attack. They have no moral compass and no morals. Now, before you attack me as a leftie (which i proudly am) I say that the "journalists" from the extreme left are void of those morals too. Your friends like Coulter and Mand that nut job O'Keefe are no more journalists than I am. They are shills of the far right with an agenda to destroy the 2 party system and democracy using the cloak of religousity and "truth". They wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the ass.

Vicki from Pasadena

jamboree said...

It doesn't matter if the cool kids shut the door on them. All lists of that kind function the same way whether it is celebrities, professionals, or regular schmoes.

The cool kids NEED the fresh blood and attention of the wannabes and hangers on to establish their kewlness. When they are truly successful in cordoning themselves off, the list dies out of pure boredom and infighting. I've seen it over and over.

I've been on both sides of it - and it really sucks behind the clubhouse door after the first few weeks or so. It's far more fun being outside of it and getting righteously irate about elitism and democratic whatever.

And the MOST fun of all, is being the one to hack the clubhouse and report on the goings on to the outside world.

No, really. I suppose it's just a matter of personality.

chickelit said...

Not only should Klein be fired, but newspapers and other media should demand that their writers and editors declare whether or not they participated in the Journolist fraud.

No way should Klein be fired. He should be ignored instead. Why is that so hard?

Roger J. said...

Wow--I am in agreement with Victoria--but with one caveat--we have few journalists these days--only polemicists masquerading as "journalists" Perhaps the necessary step is to define and agree upon what a "journalist" is.

Was Walter Duranty a journalist? Was HL Mencken? Was Tascitus? I think not--polemecists, yes. Journalists? as I understand the term, no. At any rate is an epistemoligical question.

Roger J. said...

oops: Tacitus--and I should probably include Thucididyes in my collection of polemicists

Unknown said...

I wonder what percentage of registered voters have even heard of Journolist? What percent rely on WaPo's bloggers for political information? My guess is less than 10%.

The damage occurs downstream. Campaigns and candidates are influenced. Media lemmings are influenced. So average Joe voter gets the spin on the spin on the spin. No wonder so many are calling bullshit on the media and on incumbents.

WaPo and the whole dinosaur media need to wake up, but they won't. JournoList, and Dave Weigel, and Ezra Klein are killing you. The bullshit is utterly obvious.

My advice to the dinosaur media is downsize, espedcially on the print side. Focus your talent if you have any on the internet side. Put adults in charge of editorial decisions. Let the kids edit copy.

Tucanae Services said...

They are running scared because if Weingel is just the tip of the iceberg then there could be libel suits a plenty flying pretty quickly. If I were Klein I would get a good lawyer. Discovery motions could be coming his way.

Anonymous said...

All over America, conservative parodists are tearing their hair out trying to come up with something funnier than the actual story.

Iowahawk gave it a pretty good shot last year, but he's going to have to turn it up to 11 to top this.

Anonymous said...

" What is taught in journalism class? It seems to me objectivity is paramount ... "

No, it isn't. It's not even taught. Nothing is objective about journalism.

Journalism in the United States is free. If you want to be a liberal kneepadder and suck Barack Obama's cock ... hey, it's a free country.

Nothing. Nothing about journalism is about objectivity.

It's ONLY about "how can we help Democrats get elected?"

Anonymous said...

"JournoList, and Dave Weigel, and Ezra Klein are killing you."

They don't care.

They're not in the news business.

They're not in a business at all.

It's a non-profit organization.

They don't care how much it costs because the Democrat Party will buy enough ads to keep them going forever.

Randy said...

Can we safely assume that Juan Cole is one of the authors of the e-mails to which Goldberg refers? *LOL*

While this story is yet another "beltway insider" tempest in a teapot, I admit to looking forward to the eventual publication of most of the e-mails in a tell-all book by one of the select 400. It should be entertaining at least, and might actually provide a few hearty chuckles.

BTW, Ann, I could be mistaken, but I think a number of your sparring partners on bloggingheads.tv have since gone on to jobs as "news reporters" for the Washington Post.

knox said...

the cool kids who just shut the clubhouse door on them.

The perfect metaphor for this whole situation. A clique in the form of a listserv. Barf.

Unknown said...

victoria said...

Your friends like Coulter and Mand that nut job O'Keefe are no more journalists than I am. They are shills of the far right with an agenda to destroy the 2 party system and democracy using the cloak of religousity and "truth".

Keep in mind, victoria's idea of the two party system and democracy is the same as the Soviets' idea of peace: you let us do whatever we want and don't ever complain. And smile as we do it to you.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

victoria said..

They are only, from what I can see, out to destroy journalism and attack, attack attack. They have no moral compass and no morals.


victoria sees "journalism" as the leftist pandering practiced by the four hundred on Journolist. If that's what Coulter, et al. are supposedly out to destroy then let me say to them, go to it. victoria somehow believes that "morality" lies in collusion for the purposes of controlling the narrative by those whom we are told to trust as paragons of truth.

My God, vicky, pray what is the name of your home planet? Do they use logic there?

Anonymous said...

"... the cool kids who just shut the clubhouse door on them."

But they're not the cool kids.

They're the teachers' pet buttmunchers the cool kids would never be seen with. You know the type.

They made above average grades because they stayed after school pounding erasers and washing vice principle Skinner's Mercur (careful to remove all those week-old Burger King wrappers).

You know that clique.

At my school we called them "the homos" ... had nothing to do with their sexual proclivities. They were just pussies. You know ... girlie men. They couldn't get ahead on their looks or their skill or their brains. So they made up for it by being poster boys for the PTA.

Grade A pussies who got A grades for it.

Butt-munchers.

Guess what.

They're running America now instead of running the sunglass kiosk at the mall.

Nice going, America.

You fell for it.

David said...

The incentive for recipients not to publish the emails is gone. Whether on "the list" or not, those who published the "private" emails would lose their pipeline. (Banished from the cool kids, as Althouse would say.)

Now there is no pipeline to preserve, so it becomes easier to publish.

Compare and contrast: Klein & Weigel vs. Woodward and Bernstein.

John Stodder said...

If anybody on the Journolist had true integrity, he'd upload the entire thing to an archive right now....

Or, if anybody on the Journolist was an actual journAlist with that one attribute all real reporters have -- a competitive instinct, a desire to scoop the world.

The off-the-record nature of this list has been broken so many times, there is no further justification for keeping a lid on it. Come on, somebody, make a name for yourself. Screw your asshole buddies and publish the whole thing! Fame and fortune await!

Real journalists talk to sources -- not each other.

phaedrus said...

The person that joins JournoList self-selects himself onto a team. The team is not reporters vs. all-those-having-information-the-public-has-a-right-to-know. The team is right vs. left; Democrats vs. Republicans.

If you self-select yourself onto such a team, you self-identify yourself as someone who is not an impartial journalist.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

My God, vicky, pray what is the name of your home planet? Do they use logic there?


Southern California, Pasadena to be exact. And the answer is no. No logic.

dick said...

This reminds me of the 8:30 AM call to determine the talking points of the Dems from the 2008 election - and probably started from the same group. God forbid that the members read the news and determine what they want to write about. DBQ has it right about this being just like junior high kids and their cliques.

Bruce Hayden said...

This assumes, Bob, that the right wing press has a sense of humor. They are only, from what I can see, out to destroy journalism and attack, attack attack. They have no moral compass and no morals. Now, before you attack me as a leftie (which i proudly am) I say that the "journalists" from the extreme left are void of those morals too. Your friends like Coulter and Mand that nut job O'Keefe are no more journalists than I am. They are shills of the far right with an agenda to destroy the 2 party system and democracy using the cloak of religousity and "truth". They wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the ass.

Vicki brings up a problem. What is a journalist? If the members of this listserve are journalists, then I would think that would mean that journalists are far left wackos who manage the news to get a desired result. As a reminder:

"Weigel used JournoList for exactly the purpose its critics suspected it would be used, i.e., to attempt to shape media coverage for the benefit of the Left. And he did it more than once..."
and
"The second example is particularly striking because Weigel was explcitly urging his fellow J-Listers to engage in what Weigel’s buddies and fellow travelers like to call “epistemic closure,” to operate as a closed media ecosystem that excludes competing political narratives. (It’s arguably there in the first example, too.)"

Is that a moral compass? I guess you might say so, if that is what you believe is the purpose of journalism.

Let me additionally point out that Coulter has never claimed to be a journalist. She is a lawyer turned pundit. And that is what she does, advocating for conservative positions, without any pretense of being unbiased.

And you are just mad about O'Keefe because he was so successful at investigative journalism, turning up the rampant illegal doings of ACORN. I would suggest that is far closer to what most of us think that journalists do than what the "journalists" on this list do, which is manage the news that the American public gets to advance far left causes.

BTW, I used "far left" above to point out that Coulter, O'Keefe are far closer to the mainstream than these "journalists" are, and, likely than you are. Just look at the polls. This is a center right country, and is moving more so every day, despite the best efforts of these "journalists" to move the discussion in the other direction.

damikesc said...

Anybody on such a list should be removed from any position of any legitimate newspaper in the country.

A group working together to spin news isn't journalism.

Bruce Hayden said...

Or, if anybody on the Journolist was an actual journAlist with that one attribute all real reporters have -- a competitive instinct, a desire to scoop the world.

I would concur with what I think is your point here. A real journalist would dump the entire archives online. That would be real news. Akin to what happened when that leaker dumped all that information at East Aglia in the UK.

Sure, it would go a long way in destroying the far left main stream media. But it would be news, in how they managed to win an election and get much of their far left agenda passed into law. The big dead tree outlets like the NYT and esp. the WaPo would likely be hardest hit.

p.s. I will keep using derogatory terms describing the left, as long as the hard core leftists like Vicki, et al. continue to use such with the rest of us. It doesn't help the discussion. But the use of such is part of their plan to shape the political discourse.

Bender said...

Given that apparently defamatory things were said about people behind their backs, this sounds like this thing is ripe for a DEFAMATION LAWSUIT, with discovery requiring disclosure of each and every thing that was said.

Since these folks are the makers of public opinion, it can hardly be said that if some nasty thing was said about someone that there were no damages, and given the large number of people, it can hardly be argued that this was a purely "private" exchange.

Drudge in particular might was to sue for the comments by Weigel that he molested kids, and thereby get discovery.

Jaded said...

"Does anyone else get a junior high school vibe out of this whole thing."

Yeah if you are talking about HEATHERS! This is so sickening and EVIL because these 400 "journalists" have been setting the meme for what the days stories will be. They have DESTROYED Conservatives while being a mouthpiece for the Democrat Party. When the Country is 42% Conservative and 35% Moderate and the 20% of Liberals are running the whole shebang it is CRIMINAL & CORRUPT what they have chosen to do to US!

Eric said...

WaPo and the whole dinosaur media need to wake up, but they won't. JournoList, and Dave Weigel, and Ezra Klein are killing you. The bullshit is utterly obvious.

That's my take on it. The whole conspiracy (and it is a conspiracy) is laughable for being so clumsy. The public isn't that stupid.

tim maguire said...

Is it really so hard to believe that the sort of people who can claim conspiracies involving thousands expect a mere 400 to keep a secret?

These clearly are not Ben Franklin readers.

somefeller said...

A group working together to spin news isn't journalism.

So much for the team at Fox News.

Scott said...

@lucid: We're on the same page. I've been posting basically the same thing on a few different forums, yesterday and today. It's good that people are starting to consider the ethics of JournoList and the problem that Ezra Klein poses to the Washington Post.

The fact that Klein was hired in the first place indicates that the Washington Post had given up on the idea of professional journalism. Klein is a very clever guy and a good writer, and has long experience as an activist and political operative. What he doesn't have in his CV is anything that indicates he is committed to journalism as a calling or as a professional practice.

Journalism must never be a means to some other end, if it is to be practiced at at a professional level. This must be an impossible concept for Klein to appreciate, given his experience. If he was a journalist, he would have never created JournoList, which was designed to bring liberal journalists and partisan policy wonks into a community with a common purpose.

A professional journalist would realize that such a community is a HUGE ethical problem. A professional journalist should NEVER be that close to her or his sources, and should NEVER allow themselves to be co-opted in that way. The fact that Klein made the listserv's membership secret shows that he was aware of the ethical conflict on some level -- but he did it anyway.

I am hoping that the Weigel incident will influence a few journalists to refuse membership in a future reconstituted list, if it is offered to them.

somefeller said...

And as far as a 400 person secret listserv is concerned, they seem to have forgotten the first rule of secrecy: as a group grows, the difficulty to keep a secret grows exponentially with each new member.

Paddy O said...

Southern California, Pasadena to be exact. And the answer is no. No logic.

Hey! We're a cosmopolitan town with a diversity of logic and no logic.

Scott said...

One other note: Weigel got his B.A. from the University of Missouri, which has one of the best journalism schools in the country. He ought to have had at least an inkling of the hazards that joining a clusterfuck like JournoList posed.

Oh well. For him, there's always public relations. Or maybe he can get a JD and join Jenner and Block.

Unknown said...

How many insider invites, back rubs, Ben Franklins would it take to compromise most of the Journolosers? My guess is that you could turn all of them for less than a grand a piece, and most of them for a nice meal and a cocktail.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Southern California, Pasadena to be exact. And the answer is no. No logic.


I live in Lake Elsinore, about forty miles away from Pasadena, but with the differences between LA and Riverside counties, it might as well be a parsec. For one thing, her congressman is Adam Schiff, mine is Darryl Issa.

rhhardin said...

I don't see why the secret list means anything. The left is out there in blog comments all the time.

Big Mike said...

The most appalling thing turns out to be neither Weigel nor Journolist. It's the efforts by Kurtz and by the Post ombudsman to engage in cover-up.

You'd think that the Post, of all newspapers, would understand that the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Eric said...

I don't see why the secret list means anything. The left is out there in blog comments all the time.

It's not so much that they're lefties. It's that they're the ones who have day jobs ostensibly bringing us the unbiased news. To a certain extent the public relies on the different takes of different news organizations to suss out the truth. Even if they're mostly slanted to the left they won't spin everything the same way without coordination.

When they're all getting together behind the scenes and agreeing on a common narrative, well, then we have only one source of news and these people are deciding what's going to be in it.

Steven said...

John Cole is calling messages mass-sent to over 400 people, many of whom Dave Weigel can only have a passing acquaintance with, "private".

The question is; is it a bigger discredit to Mr. Cole if he actually believes such messages are private, or if he's just pretending he believes it for rhetorical purposes?

Revenant said...

I’m not against using my perch at the Atlantic to publish someone’s private emails to viciously destroy their character and career

Interesting choice of words. How do you destroy someone's character by revealing what they have said? Does Cole not distinguish between a person's reputation (which can be destroyed from without) and a person's character (which can only be destroyed by the person himself)?

GMay said...

Rev asked: "How do you destroy someone's character by revealing what they have said? Does Cole not distinguish between a person's reputation (which can be destroyed from without) and a person's character (which can only be destroyed by the person himself?"

This seems to be the conundrum Democrats encounter when Faux Noise or any other non-Democrat simply quotes Democrats. Suddenly using one's own words becomes an attack, character assassination, or coarsening of public debate.

JoeInMichigan said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Does anyone else get a junior high school vibe out of this whole thing.

You don't know the half of it, Dusty.
Check this out..I nearly peed myself first time I read it. It's about 10 times as funny now.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/04/one-afternoon-in-a-secret-corner-of-the-internet.html

Blue@9 said...

So much for the supposed sanctity of the Fourth Estate and how indispensable they are to the functioning of the Republic. Who watches the watchers? Who watches them when they're on a private listserv collaborating and colluding to control the media narrative?

If a conservative listserv with Rupert Murdoch and 400 conservative journalists and pundits was uncovered and shown to be a tool to coordinate the "framing" of stories or to kill them, the liberals would be howling about the existential threat to the nation. But here, nah, it was harmless, nothing to see here, move along.

Blue@9 said...

So when is someone at a big media outlet going to call for the outing of all 400 members of Journolist?

Who is going to investigate whether there were other efforts to manipulate stories?

I don't know why people are making light of this. It's a Big Fucking Deal in my book. These are 400 of some of the most prominent liberal journalists, pundits, and bloggers in the country. Were they all in on coordinating the narrative on behalf of the Democratic Party? How is this not a massive story?

Anonymous said...

From what I read over time, there were leaks, I remember Mickey Kaus exposed, and I believe he was the first to do so, one or another of those anal retentive brats on journolist. I remember laughing myself silly when Joe Klein was being trashed by one or more of them.

I was at the stage of readiness when I was prepared to re-affiliate away from the dem party, mad as hell, et al.. and feeling a complete fool, when I first read about the list for the first time. I really want to see that herd of rabid cats exposed for what they are.

John Stodder said...

So much for the supposed sanctity of the Fourth Estate and how indispensable they are to the functioning of the Republic. Who watches the watchers?

Don't go there. Obama might get the idea that Journolist happened because of lax Bush-era regulations that must be tightened up.

Just because 400 journalists kinda don't get what the journalism business is really about doesn't mean the watchers need to be watched. Put the story out there, humiliate the members with their own words...that's plenty.

John Stodder said...

So much for the team at Fox News.

You have obviously not watched Shepard Smith lately. One of the regular Fox contributors, Andrew Napolitano, went on the Smith's show the other day making some point about how poorly the government has handled the BP spill and Smith nearly blew a gasket, detailing the immense amount of evidence of BP's laxity on safety.

For that matter, Bill O'Reilly frequently defends Obama, in particular on the oil spill.

The common stereotype of Fox News as a part of the so-called "Republican noise machine" really only applies to about 1/3 of its programming, chiefly Hannity, "Fox and Friends" and Glenn Beck, along with some of their weekend stuff. The rest of it is actually pretty good, and does not go easy on the Republicans. It reports things Democrats would rather not be reported, true. But those things are news.

Largo said...

Interesting choice of words. How do you destroy someone's character by revealing what they have said?

@Rev:
It was probably more a careless slop than a revealing slip, but that is an astute observation.

Blue@9 said...

Just because 400 journalists kinda don't get what the journalism business is really about doesn't mean the watchers need to be watched.

I don't mean to imply that the gov't needs to do the watching. But somebody on that list has to be willing to pull an Ellsberg and release the archive.

lucid said...

@Scott--

Nail the shaeful bastards!!! Keep posting. Lots of people see these blogs.

HalifaxCB said...

Old list = Cordeliers Club
New List = Hebertists