All the President’s Stenographers
Four questions for the Washington Post from Daily Caller publisher Neil Patel, including:
4) What do all the other so-called objective journalists who are members of JournoList have to say? How can they claim any loose association with the concepts of truth and fairness as they stood by and participated in this fraud?
Few members of JournoList have commented publicly on Weigel to date. One of the few who has anonymously defended him to POLITICO:
Whoever broke the confidentiality of the list obviously has no respect for some pretty basic journalistic norms. But I can’t talk about it because it’s supposed to be confidential. Whoever leaked that is obviously extremely jealous of the exceptional work that Dave is doing for the Post, and whatever Dave said should be viewed in that light.
Excuse me? The Washington Post holds out Weigel as their reporter of choice to cover conservatives and Republicans. Weigel spends all his time going to conservative and Republican events and claiming to be an objective reporter there to cover them fairly. In between these events Weigel goes online and vents on JournoList to 400 other journalists — many who claim to be of the “objective” variety — about just how much he hates those “ratfucker” (his word) conservatives and Republicans. All of the other journalists in the know about this fraud just sit tight and let the fraud continue. Are these the “basic journalistic norms” that those on JournoList are upholding? The reporters on JournoList owe their readers an explanation.
Read the whole thing.
Update: As the Washington Post continues its pattern of cheat and retreat, the Post’s Andrew Alexander plays the usual latter role as an MSM ombudsman:
Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.
I have no idea how much Alexander was smirking when he wrote that, because it can’t be sincere. It’s almost identical to what his predecessor wrote in November of 2008, after admitting that the Washington Post was — shocker! — in the tank for Obama:
I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.
What, and risk being dubbed ratf***er for complaining?
Or as I rhetorically asked after reading that, “So what are you doing to change such an obviously poisoned internal culture?”
And now we know: hope they don’t get noticed doubling down on their hard left bias, and then bring out the ombudsman to once again put a Band-Aid on the tumor when caught.
Related: “The Oral Suicide Club: David Weigel Joins Helen Thomas, Van Jones, Michael Richards, Howard Dean.”
Update: Epistemic Closure — “The overlooked story from the Weigel kerfuffle.”
“no respect for some pretty basic journalistic norms”
Norms like keeping the left-wing bias of your “objective” buddies secret.
After all, what is Journo-list but a place for the shriekers like Krugman and Schultz to get together and arrange the talking points for the next day’s Two Minute Hate?
How much do you want to bet that Andrew Alexander himself is on the JournoList?
Mike G, I wouldn’t bet a Barack Obama three-dollar bill against that.
How much would you love to see the list of Journolist participants? It’d be the journalist equivalent of the Venona transcripts.
How quickly people forget about Jeff Gannon, the fraud paid for by the Bush Administration, the most corrupt administration in the history of the country. Jeff Gannon ignored Bush’s illegal wars and fealty to Big Oil and Haliburton, who by the way caused the oil spill and is now making millions cleaning it up. Funny how you ignore that in your story.
That was not bad satire, Vinny. You almost perfectly captured the usual BDS attempt to distract with a non sequitur.
The administration never paid anything to Gannon. He is most famous for asking a question that the Left considered “deferential”. You might want to go to Wikipedia and check out the question. He essentially asked Mr. Bush how he was going to work with an opposition that exaggerated and distorted events and facts. Bush’s “illegal” wars were approved by both parties in congress. And as to his fealty to Big Oil, Mr. Obama received millions in campaign donations from BP while BP helped in crafting the impending cap and trade legislation. If you can show that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney made any money from oil during their administration or after it, I would appreciate knowing it. I wonder how well they’re doing, as well as the Clintons who went from no money to 100s of millions?
Do these enterprising “journo-listers” realize that they are sitting on a best seller with more data dumps? Perhaps a series of expose’s at Rolling Stone”
Who’s this “Bush” of whom you speak?
Four hundred journalists colluding to manipulate the news? Nah. No story there. Look, a puppy!
Is it just me, or does the notion of reforming the media seem as quixotic and hopeless as trying to “reform” the KKK, the Nazi Party, and the Communist Party? Perhaps we should face the truth: organizations like the Washington Post, the <New York Times, the <Los Angeles Times, ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, MSNBC are like the KKK – hopelessly evil and rotten to the core. You don’t reform the KKK, you ignore it when it does not break the law and prosecute when it does. And you never take anything it says at face value – ever. We should treat the Washington Post and the rest of the MSM the same way we treat other hate groups.
In my lifetime I have watched the MSM openly side with first the Soviet Union and later Islamofascist terrorists. In between those actions they have flaked for every two-bit lefty totalitarian like Obama who ever sought political office in the US. In all that time the MSM’s goal has never wavered: the extinction of liberty and the establishment of a one-party fascist police state. Just as it took decades to purge the KKK from the American political system, it will take at least that long to get rid of the MSM.
And the INVASION continues… http://www.BorderInvasionPics.com
Is it just me, or does the notion of reforming the media seem as quixotic and hopeless as trying to “reform” the KKK, the Nazi Party, and the Communist Party? Perhaps we should face the truth: organizations like the Washington Post, the <New York Times, the <Los Angeles Times, ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, MSNBC are like the KKK – hopelessly evil and rotten to the core.
Well said, Mwalimu. I’d add “pointless,” but that’s a quibble.
Let’s face it the “news” organizations you listed are effectively the PR arm of the Communist Party, in either its above- or underground excrescences. When, if ever, have they ever taken the side of freedom, democracy, or American values against those of the socialists? Walter Duranty was not the anomaly – he was the model.
For any given issue it’s perfectly possible to predict their position: whichever take advances socialism. Conversely, remove all ethnic, political, and national identifiers from a news story and ask a liberal for his take. Answer: he won’t tell you (I’ve tried this many times), because he doesn’t know which pan of the scale to put his thumb on.) Try it – it’s great fun, and highly illuminating.
I never thought I’d live long enough to see the National Enquirer become more reliable than the NYT, WaPo, or LAT, but …I have.
I haven’t seen anyone else point this out:
Note: Weigel pisses away the WaPo‘s journalistic integrity, thus making it lose standing among conservatives. It doesn’t even occur to Alexander that liberals ought to care about journalistic integrity, too. And do they? Not so you’d notice.
And all those principled reporters and editors on the JournoList? They mostly seem upset that someone on the list violated omertà. That person will be found, and that person will pay.
Hack the list. Get the names. Re-education camp for all at the “Columbia School of
Journalism.”
“…So what are you doing to change such an obviously poisoned internal culture?…” The answer to that question is obvious – NOTHING.
The Washington Post is what it is, a liberal tank job for whatever the DemocRATic Party is selling today. But just as the NYTimes, LA Times et al are dying the slow death of MSM pestilence, WAPO is on the same track to NOWHERE.
Frankly, I don’t care about Dave Weigel or the WaPo or the MSM. What I want to know is why the federal bureaucracy has done so little to clean up the Gulf spill. It really looks a lot like deliberate indifference in services to passing more of the environmental agenda.
The dead-tree press, who needs them? I quit subscribing some years back and haven’t miss it.
Thinking creatively, it seems to me that a conspriacy was perpetrated on the public by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, excetera excetera excetera…
Who was injured by this? Who wasn’t injured?
Why can’t we bring a civil liability class action against these ratf**kers?
That’s how the KKK was busted up. I can’t think of a more healthful move to put the country back on the right track.
Wouldn’t the world be a better place with the New York Times bankrupt financially, instead of just morally?