JournoList Exposes Journalists As Propagandists

For those who haven’t kept up with the recent “JournoList” scandal, you need to know about this one. What is JournoList? It’s a Google Group for journalists. And what is the scandal? The scandal is that leaked e-mails from this group are showing that these journalists have been conspiring to spread left wing propaganda. And that's not hyperbole.

JournoList was a members-only Google Group to which 400 journalists and academics belonged. Created by Erza Klein, a Washington Post / Newsweek columnist, the group was open only to “left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics.” Klein kept out conservatives because he claimed he didn't want a flame war. But you be the judge if that was his real intent.

This scandal began when several posts from this group were leaked to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. The first of these to be released were from David Weigel, the supposedly not-liberal Washington Post blogger (he described himself as having "libertarian" sympathies). Weigel, who covered conservatives for the Post, was caught expressing a rather vile level of hatred for various conservatives, such as suggesting that Matt Drudge should set himself on fire and Rush Limbaugh should die. But Weigel was just the beginning. Here is a sampling of some of what has been said:

• Jonathan Zasloff, a UCLA “law” professor, wrote like a good little Nazi that he wanted to see the government shut down FOX News.

• Sarah Spitz of National Public Radio, a hateful troll, wrote that she would laugh if she saw Rush Limbaugh have a heart attack in front of her.

• Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg News compared the Tea Party to the Nazis. And he would know because all his friends think like Nazis. . . friends like Spencer Ackerman!

• Spencer "Adolf" Ackerman of The Washington Impendent apparently wishes to re-enact Kristallnacht. He wrote that they should “find a right winger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear.”

But this is just invective and hate speech from people with small minds and defective genitalia. The real scandal goes deeper than their hate. The real scandal is that these e-mails are revealing that these leftist “journalists” have been conspiring together to shape the news, and they don’t consider truth an obstacle.

For example, when the Jeremiah Wright story came out, the group debated how to bury the story. Michael Tomasky, a writer for The Guardian suggested they kill the Wright story: “Listen folks -- in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have.” But don’t worry, this wasn’t to defend Obama or anything like that, it was to stop the evil MSM from killing “discourse.” Uh huh.

Our old friend “Adolf” Ackerman goes further. He suggested that the group distract the public by coordinating an attack against a prominent conservative using the age-old leftist whine of “racism”:

“If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists.”

These guys couldn't be more of a caricature of budding Nazis if they were caught taking goose-stepping classes. And in case you're wondering, no, they did not try to kick anyone like Ackerman or Weigel or Spitz off the list, nor is there any evidence that anyone even chastised them for their hate.

Tucker Carlson, who apparently possesses a large number of these e-mails, notes that this coordination was common behavior on the JournoList:

“Again and again, we discovered members of JournoList working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too. I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It’s harder to make that defense now.”

So how are these leftists responding? Well, after Weigel got fired, they immediately shut down the JournoList and destroyed the evidence. . . er, deleted the group. Then they attacked Carlson for only releasing part of the e-mails. . . as if they couldn't release the rest themselves. Then they set about whining about privacy, something journalists have never respected. According to Time’s Joe Klein, maintaining confidentiality was necessary because “candor is essential” because it ensures “that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions.” Funny, I don’t recall any of these “journalists” buying that argument when the Bush administration made it. . . or BP. . . or anyone else really.

The rest have moved on and formed JournoList 2.0 -- it’s actually called “Cabalist.” This one was created by Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic and has 173 members already. And on July 21, it was revealed that one of their first orders of business was to debate how to suppress the story about JournoList by making collective decisions about what to write.

So what is the issue here? The issue is that this little cabal of leftists has conspired to coordinate their stories to support leftist causes and attack right-leaning persons and ideas. They've shown a blinding hate for anyone they disagree with and they’ve made it clear that neither truth nor accuracy will stand in their way -- in fact, they routinely propose flat out lies and venomous personal attacks. That makes these people propagandists, not journalists. . . 400 pathetic little Himmlers.

What's worse these propagandists do not identify themselves as leftist operatives; they pretend to be "journalists." And that's the real problem here. Everyone knows that the leftist bloggers at Huffpo are lying to you to make their points. But when these people pretend to be "journalists" and they work for supposed news-organizations, then what you have is a disgrace for the journalistic “profession.”

Indeed, the fact that they still have jobs is troubling. I can only conclude that the organizations they work for have decided that they like being willing instruments of their propaganda. Unless these organizations purge their ranks of these people (something they should like as leftists always love a good purge), then it’s time that we stopped treating these organizations as journalistic organizations. . . because they’re not.

And if you haven't heard about this, I'll give you one guess why not.