How the Wright-Free Zone was Built
At the Daily Caller, Jonathan Strong rummages through the JournoList and describes how documents from mid-2008 “show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright:”
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
And don’t forget to have CNN declare their network a “Wright-Free Zone” — a week after praising to the hilt Wright’s performance at the annual convention of the NAACP:
(Much more from Andrew Breitbart, who writes, “American journalism died a long time ago; today [the Website of] Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary.”)
Update (11:40 AM PDT): Welcome readers clicking in from:
- The Daily Caller homepage
- Big Journalism
- Hot Air
- Instapundit
- Michelle Malkin
- Newsbusters
- Blogs for Victory
- The Anchoress
Update: April 28th, 2008: CNN’s Longest Day.
This is just as suspected.
The surprise is…that these “journalists” could be so stupid to conspire together on the internet and think this would not be uncovered.
The mainstream press in the US today…is a joke.
On the contrary, the MSM, or better named, the collaborationist press is deadly serious. They will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to destroy the republic of our Founding Fathers and replace it with a fascist-socialist one-party state. Do NOT make the mistake that the collaborationist press is dead: the Republicans will, after November, find that these snakes are quite alive. I seriously doubt that the Republicans have even begun to understand the sh-t storm that is coming their way after November.
Yawn. Shocking. Liberal journalists and bloggers from liberal publications and blogs emailing each other about what they think the election should be about. Earth shattering stuff. Wake me when the fake “controversy” is over.
Uh…Steve…does this mean I can finally be spared the “They don’t do this on purpose, it’s not a conspiracy for heaven’s sake, it’s just that in their circle of friends this is normal behavior.”
I have heard that argument pushed for decades. Every time I walked through the logic of it, my lunch backed up on me. How can it be coincidence that they ALL bury the same story? That they ALL distort the facts and butcher the truth on the same subject. That they photoshop pictures, forge documents, …always in the same direction and always assisting leftists?
It was a lie then…when they said to take off the tin foil hat…WHILE they were hatching the conspiracy.
It’s a lie now.
The entrenched media is a den of liars and thieves. They stole my information stream.
And, I want it back.
John McCain’s refusal to go after Barack Obama regarding his long term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright allowed these despicable left-wing journalists to get away with their slime jobbing. The GOP nominee possessed the power to stop them dead in their tracks.
True, David. But I view that as a separate point entirely. McCain himself (and his family) were victims of the conspiracy. They photoshopped his face, to show his eyes glowing red on the cover of a magazine, snickered about it…then issued a half-hearted “apology” when caught, then snickered some more. They trashed his wife. They made an issue of his grades…and didn’t sit on their hands related to Obama…they cut them off entirely.
(They made an issue of Bush’s grades as well…and somehow missed Al Gore’s in comparison, so it is not a new tactic)
McCain was a weak and bumbling candidate. He didn’t articulate ANY of the issues particularly well. Palin got skewered daily and his defense of her was faint, often nearly invisible. Either take her and defend her…or choose someone else.
However, the entrenched media would have played the “racist” card…which they have now ADMITTED is a fraudulent tactic used for the purposes of distraction and distortion…and McCain would have been helpless against it.
As are ALL non-leftists. The conspiracy to use the charge of racism as a weapon AGAINST the truth is out in the open. It’s much more important to address that issue going forward…AND the rest of the entrenched media’s conspiracy, in my opinion, than to ponder what improvement an otherwise weak and feeble McCain candidacy would have enjoyed, if only…he had dared to stare down the conspiracy mounted against him…and “manned up” on the Wright issue.
In my opinion, they would have circled the wagons and crushed him and he would have folded like an Origami cutout kitten in their wake.
One man can’t stand up to this. And, if EVERY good person doesn’t take a stand, on perhaps the greatest disgrace in this nation in our lifetime, this story will be killed off and die. And, our national integrity along with it.
As did Slick Willy and wife.
I agree with your statements, but you expected more from John McCain than he could produce. I hate to say it but Obama almost won by default. I really hope that the Republican Party fields a better candidate the the last time.
David Thomson, you’re exactly right. John McCain could not bring himself to be who he has said George W. Bush was in 2000. He ran for the presidency, but he didn’t run to win.
Some of the voices on the Journolist were opinion writers, from the left, natch. So op-ed types creating a narrative is one thing. News hounds doing the same is another. Media critics should take care in separating the two to keep their arguments strong. There’s enough evidence to indict the MSM as is.
While it’s true that the Wright thread on Journolist was made up of op ed writers and people working for obviously biased publications like The Nation — who you would naturally expect to be rabidly pro-Obama in 2008 — it’s also true that some, like Tomasky, often publish in (supposed) mainstream non-partisan places like The Washington Post, without letting readers in on their obvious extreme biases, and that other, non-op ed writers who were members of Journolist has full access to reading the thread and the proposals by posters like Ackerman to arbitrarily pick out conservative pundits and reporters to tar with racism allegations and apparently thought nothing of it in an ‘ends justify the means’ sort of way.
Trying to ruin other journalists’ careers with false charges was talked about basically in the open and nobody else with Journolist access said anything until now (obviously, someone was miffed enough to have saved the thread for The Daily Caller, but didn’t get around to releasing it until 28 months after the fact — its nice that they saved the cache, but it’s still a wee bit after the fact).
Revelations like this are good to keep on file and in a handy place to pull out two years from now, because whomever the Republicans pick as their nominee along with their key supporters will have a virtual Las Vegas casino worth of race cards thrown at them by many of the same people, in all probably coordinating their plans from whatever new super-secret site they’ve come up with to replace Journolist.
I don’t know, Christian. I mean, I get the distinction between op-ed and “news”. Presenting the facts and getting to the truth should be the primary focus of both, however, no?
Or should one be devoid of distortion, conspiracy to conceal material facts…and the other should be allowed such things?
I read your comments often and like them, so I am not picking on you in the slightest. I simply feel the full weight of was is unveiling here to be of paramount importance.
I did not and do not believe that anyone who sat in those pews week after week after week, listening to the spewing bile from Jeremiah Wright, can claim a divorce and permanent separation from the ideologies advanced.
(“he went to Klan meetings, never missed a one…but didn’t identify with any of the sentiments there”….would that pass the smell test of anyone on the left? The center? ANYONE AT ALL?)
If you kept concert and communion with the thoughts expressed in Journolist that keep coming to the fore now…and gave agreement either through active conspiracy or passive acquiescence…if you buried stories, if you hid the truth, if you distorted facts, if you failed to vet candidates, if you intentionally misled citizens of this land of ours…then you are a fully hooded member of the JournoKlan and you lynched our information stream in the backwoods of the entrenched media hideout.
The Op-ed writer gets no pass from me, simply because his “job” is to sway opinion. If you are falsely calling someone a racist, if you are conspiring to use your position as a member of the media elite to gang rape the truth…you are a conspirator in the greatest crime of the century. The greatest disgrace to this land of ours. Everything we “know” may be untrue. They have stolen our honor, they have ripped away our integrity.
On purpose. In a known conspiracy. Every issue is now suspect. Nothing can be believed.
And they ALL sat there…and let that happen. I’m ashamed to call them countrymen. They stole my information stream. And I want it back.
JournoKlan.
A good illustration.
Rush Limbaugh loves to run often hilarious “highlight” tapes of MSM’s memes du jour. You would think that at least on occasion, they would recognize how ridiculous they are.
(And even op-ed writers aren’t entitled to their own facts.)
These nasty leftist journalists will distort what they want to. But let’s remember their most powerful weapon is to simply not cover what makes Obama and the left look bad. Republicans and conservatives are always at a disadvantage in trying to get their message out in a fair and undistorted form. For Democrats and liberals the mainstream media will trumpet their message to the point of attempted brainwashing
Citizen Journalism here – http://www.BorderInvasionPics.com
It seems clear to me that these activities run afoul of both state and Federal consumer protection statutes: selling false accusations of racism and propaganda with knowledge of their falsehood as ‘news’ is simply fraud.
That also means the purveyors of such junk ‘news’ are subject to criminal charges for conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, RICO, etc.
They are also open to civil suits for libel and civil RICO suits for fraud.
Just think how much fun the discovery process would be.
Ed, can I suggest something to you and all the other bloggers of influence following this story?
Instead of more nebulous griping about media bias, or a scattershot attack on all the JournoListers, I propose a coordinated Alinksy style personal attack from the entire Right side of the web to ruin the career of one or two of these scumbags, pour encourager les autres.
Let Col. Driscoll and Gen. Malkin and Field Marshal Reynolds sound the trumpet, and we foot sooldiers will respond with a torrent of criticism to whatever editor or ombudsman or important advertiser will be most likely to cause trouble for the target of our efforts.
May I nominate Mr. Ackerman himself first, since he seems to think manufacturing false charges of racism is an acceptable media tactic to advance the narrative? Let’s get him fired and hound him from job to job for years. Let’s nail his nut sack to the wall.
John,
“Let’s nail his nut sack to the wall.”
Let’s leave the fake macho tone to the left, huh?
Ed
John Skookum is the Modern Liberal Left.
The dead give away is the fascist tone. And of course a desire to have a sexual collectivist nailing event.
“Let’s nail his nut sack to the wall.”
Persons Galore…
Fair enough. May I say “Hit back twice as hard” ??
While I think the distinction between journalist & op-ed writer should be noted, the op-ed writers could use stories that supposed straight-news “journalists” supported their views with the facts, or omission of facts, that these supposed fair journalists reported. Also, let’s not forget that there were non-media members in Journolist. So that these “journalists” could go to these academics & govt. types for quotes to support their story in a way that fit the narrative, all under the guise of a legitimate, non-orchestrated narrative when the narrative may have in fact been determined by all participants. I hope that wee see more excerpts involving non-media members.
If one takes into consideration some of the shocking news items that have FINALLY come out about the 2008 election: i.e.
The video “We Will Not Be Silenced” by Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton documenting how the Obama campaign manipulated the primary caucuses to steal the nomination from Hillary, even though she won the popular vote;
The fact that Acorn fraudulently registered thousands, if not millions of voters in many states;
The investigation by the Minnesota Majority which proves that Al Franken did NOT legitimately win his Senatorial seat because convicted felons who cannot legally vote, did so in great enough numbers to affect the outcome of this election;
The revelation that the DOJ now has a policy of not prosecuting cases of voter intimidation where the victim is white and the perpetrator is black;
The statement by Bartle Bull that there are still many of these fraudulent Acorn voter registrations out there which he fears may adversely affect the outcome of future elections.
And now proof positive that the MSM conspired to affect the outcome of the elections by lying to us;
How can we be sure that voter dissatisfaction with what has been going on in this country will be legitimately reflected in the next election[s]? Have we not sunk to the level of a third world country which requires UN observers to oversee our elections to make certain that they are fair and impartial?
i am concerned about that too. how can we make the DOJ go though and take out people who are dead, felons and people that the SEIU made up, before the election in Nov.? I know the DOJ has already said they will not do this, because they know it could make a big difference in the outcome of the election. but, is there anything we can do to force them?
This informative series of articles, inspires me to create a new parlor game. ” Mommy, who’s the plant in the John McCain Campaign”. This game of course comes with a multiple set of velvet sheaved knives and blindfolds as you spin the candidate and the supporters into dizzying darken room, Edward Scissorhand styled stilettos fly blindingly into the soft sated underbelly of the American Idiot. Let’s play as we drift about the Sargasso Sea of slime, who’s the plant (plants). Any guesses?
Under the restrictions put in place by the Supreme Court, in order for a public official to win a defamation/libel suit, he has to prove that not only is the information wrong, but that the person spreading the information has malicious intent.
I believe that these comments prove the malicious intent.
not only the “wright-free zone”. Also included should be lack of references to Bill Ayers and his bitch wife Bernadette Dohrn, lack of references to the moslem academic terrorist Rashid Khalihi and his numerous ties to the extreme pig George Soros. I actually consider lack of coverage about Ayers and Soros even worse, considering there histories.
First things first-No republican candidate should agree to aninterview with ant slimstink media outlet. You know for afact they will try to distort your message. Go to every talk radio outlet possible. Interview with OReilly, Hume, Chris Walalce or Fox news. The rest of the media needs to learn a lesson-cut off the NY slimes and the Washington Compost entirely. talk to the Washington times. Use the internet-theeditors at PJTV should have a field day. Deal with Andrew Brietbart and the “big” sites , or Human Events. Get your message out unfiltered by the Goebbels propaganda Inc. After you get elcted, continue to marginalize the Goebbels Propaganda Inc. The media cant survive without those in power dealing with them. The Slimestink media puts ideology above honest reporting-that can cut both ways. They want a fight, then give them one. Dumbama is in trouble in spite of the Goebbels media protecting him.
With the Rev Wright revelation the blinders came off for me and at that moment I saw Obama for what he is with perfect clarity. The media conspiracy is no surprise either. They are mere propagandists. They have been irrelevant for years. Now they deliberately propagate malice and untruths upon the American people. I am not surprised that a man who sat in Rev Wright’s church for 20 years, thinks the way he thinks and does the things he does. Notice if he can’t have Rev Wright he just simply declines to go to church. He is a believer in Black Liberation Theology along with his wife and kids. He will be back in the Reverand’s pews after he leaves office
I hear that there will be an inquiry into the potential malfeasance of Journolist members, to be held at the University of East Anglia.
OK, so what this means is that these journalists in their professional positions used the resources at their disposal to campaign for a presidential candidate.
Doesn’t that violate federal campaign laws?
Only if you agree that friendly coverage is the equivalent of a cash donation. It used to be difficult to prove there was an intent behind such coverage other than report the news, even when we felt it was happening. This list is pretty good evidence that these reporters intended to contribute to Obama’s election and gave him huge campaign contributions in the form of free PR and positive press coverage.
“And don’t forget to have CNN declare their network a “Wright-Free Zone””
When John Roberts said “we are declaring a Reverend Wright-free zone today,” did he mean:
A) “we are declaring today that CNN will be from now on a network that is Reverend Wright-free”
or
B) “we are declaring that this conversation with you, Mr. Obama, will be, today only, a Reverend Wright-free one”
?
You can ALWAYS tell who the progressive is. They immediately begin by calling some one names. Like the little child that doesn’t get picked for one of the teams in a pick up game of ball.