At Liberty Pundits, Mark Levin and Melissa Clouthier round-up 62 of the apparently 400 names on the JournoList; click over to her Melissa’s post to scan the list. Is it accurate? Well, there’s one easy way to find out!
Afterward, Melissa writes:
Let’s see, folks from the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time and Newsweek magazine. These are not children. These are people we’re supposed to respect as objective, “smart” (a friend said this about the whole notion of “smart”: I do get weary of the left needing to apply the word “smart” to themselves all the time. To make that distinction, “a smart…conversation”
Advertisementas opposed to all the stupid ones that don’t involve them. because if they don’t involve them, they are by definition stupid…), and fair.
Uh huh.
The Journolist story is important. It demonstrates a inbred, ideological group-think that drives the modern media in both print and on TV.
As Kathy Shaidle adds:
This morning, the Daily Caller rolled out additional damning details from the archives of Journolist, the “missing link” that finally proves the existence of that once mythical creature, Liberalis Medius Biasus.
I remember when everyone from “media guru” Jeff Jarvis to Glenn Beck (as he recalled on the air yesterday) assured us (often with an indulgent chuckle) that while there was some ideological self-selection going on in the makeup of the nation’s newsrooms, hey, it wasn’t like reporters and editors were, you know, calling each other up every morning, plotting about which stories they were going to bury and which conservatives they’d smear today.
That was crazy talk!
Ooops. Turns out, the only thing wrong with that paranoid, nutbar conspiracy theory was the assumption that reporters were still using the phone.
Though in retrospect, that might not have been a bad idea for them if they still were.
Related: “Old & busted: ‘Liberal media bias? Get real!’ New hotness: ‘Well, of COURSE the media has a liberal bias. Don’t act so surprised, rube!’”
More on that topic here; certainly not the first time that particular pivot has been employed.
Related: Orrin Judd adds:
The tone of many of the missives these folks sent each other seems unfortunate–wishing death or harm to people with whom they have political differences–and the presence of some serious reporters on the list is disturbing, but, for the most part, if a bunch of liberal opinion writers want to bitch amongst themselves about how awful the Right is, the exercise is pretty harmless. If anything, the danger is to themselves, as they could begin to mistake their little bubble for reality. But, for instance, our friend Rick Perlstein was on the list and, in the meantime, he also had his own list of pet conservatives from whom he’d gather the opposing viewpoints.So there’s nothing wrong with the list per se. Nor does this seem like a conspiracy to shape the news, no matter how much a few participants might have wished it to be one.
On the other hand, it’s awfully hard to take seriously the indignation of the participants and their friends that the contents of the list leaked. One struggles to recall any of them expressing similar concerns when the press has been the recipient of leaks regarding conversations within government, business, the political parties etc. And it won’t do to claim that they are private figures. We afford the Press certain special rights and privileges precisely because it serves a public or quasi-public function. Just as they often expose what people thought were private communications, because they believe there is a news value inherent to those communications, so too must they live with the fact that their own communications may be newsworthy. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, no?
Serpico and Karen Silkwood could not be reached for comment.
Harmless? These are the people who dictate the news narrative and by extension of that shape the worldview of millions. Yet far from being objective, they are strict leftists, and not only leftists but fanatical ones who think their opponents are evil and wish them death. There is nothing harmless about radical lefties being in control of the media narrative.
And no media conspiracy? What do you call comparing notes and discussing what strategies they use to the make conservatives look bad and make liberals (especially Obama) look good? Specifically, they are caught coordinating the effort to bury the Jeremiah Wright issue. If that’s not collusion, and collusion with the intent to put out a consistent biased viewpoint, I don’t know what is.
These e-mails expose just how deep and virulent the MSM’s attempt to propagandize really is.
Writers can form groups like JournoList, discuss issues, refine stories and conclusions, and each report those conclusions as their own. That is not plagiarism if it is a collaboration. They can even agree about what is not news, what is not useful to report. There is nothing illegal about that, but it is inconvenient for the reader.
We readers must make a judgment. We cannot trust in the usual diversity of viewpoint that would come from independent thinkers. We have to assume that we are getting one viewpoint through hundreds of authors, from hundreds of newspapers and news sources. We must realize that liberal news sources are presenting just one or a few stories, not the wide diversity of information that we assumed before. They have appointed themselves to do the thinking for us so that we don’t have to.
The lesson of JournoList is that we can’t get all the news, or even most of it, from any collection of liberal sources. People must read conservative sources, even if they don’t like their viewpoint, if they want the rest of the story.
Former members of JournoList or any other news collaborative should proudly display their JournoList or collaborative emblem, and state something like “Here is the real story, just what you need, without a clutter of confusing information that destroys the simple narrative. I am or was a member of JournoList.”
Are they proud of their former collaboration of the best and the brightest, or do they have something to hide?
Turns out, the only thing wrong with that paranoid, nutbar conspiracy theory was the assumption that reporters were still using the phone.
The Journolisters are so smart that instead of using the phone, they chose to document and archive their crimes via a listserv group.
PS: The hypocrisy of libturds knows no bounds.