On The Hijacking Of Main Street Media

Re: The Left


"The Journolist has started to leak like an overripe diaper. Just in case you've been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here's the story. A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv 'Journolist' for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks and the world of forthright liberal activism generally. They spoke freely about their political and personal biases, including their hatred of Fox and Rush Limbaugh, and their utter loyalty to the progressive cause and Democratic success. That off-the-record intellectual bacchanalia has started to haunt the participants like an inexplicable rash after a wild party during fleet week. ... Perhaps stretching the diaper metaphor too far, what's inside Journolist may stink, but it's no surprise that it does. ... Journolist is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is not a secret conspiracy but something more like the 'Open Conspiracy' H.G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority. ... For a liberal activist that's forgivable, I guess. But academics? Reporters? Editors? Even liberal opinion writers aren't supposed to 'coordinate' their messages with the mothership." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Opinion in Brief

"The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism. Thus, the J-List discussion revealed [last week] in the Daily Caller was about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Reverend Wright affair and help elect Barack Obama. Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his/her duty. For example, the J-List included Washington Post reporters, and the idea that the paper has been turned into a propaganda organ is a big reason it is bleeding readers and influence. Of course, it is possible that the Post's editors were on the list, since the membership is not known, in which case the corporate executives should fire the editors, or the board should fire the executives, or the stockholders should fire the board. (If Director Warren Buffet was on J-List, I give up.) So here, JournoList is composed not of reporters who happen to be 'Progressives,' but of Progressives who boast about how to perfect and use their capture of their employers. This is in itself institutional rot, but the more serious rot is the failure of the managers of those institutions to react to the problem." --James DeLong of the American Enterprise Institute

So, You Think You Can Find The Truth In The Newspapers And News Stations? Read Your History Instead!