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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:08 am Post subject: Journo-list |
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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/the-corruption-of-journolist.html
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The latest revelations from Journo-list are deeply depressing to me. What's depressing is the way in which liberal journalists are not responding to events in order to find out the truth, but playing strategic games to cover or not cover events and controversies in order to win a media/political war.
The far right is right on this: this collusion is corruption. It is no less corrupt than the comically propagandistic Fox News and the lock-step orthodoxy on the partisan right in journalism - but it is nonetheless corrupt. Having a private journalistic list-serv to debate, bring issues to general attention, notice new facts seems pretty innocuous to me. But this was an attempt to corral press coverage and skew it to a particular outcome. To wit:
What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger�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. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. 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. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes them sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction. |
That's from Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/print/
http://bigjournalism.com/abreitbart/2010/07/20/journolist-yes-but-the-reporters-at-pravda-werent-such-insufferable-assholes/
http://bigjournalism.com/category/journolist/ |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Sounds like they adapted and co-opted the tactics of the American Right from about ten years ago, if you ask me. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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Clive Crook says 'meh'
| Clive Crook wrote: |
I find the fuss over JournoList -- Ezra Klein's now-defunct email network for liberal writers -- perplexing. The idea that 400 journalists, academics and assorted hangers-on could plot to do anything, even if they agreed they wanted to, is laughable.
Somebody on the list says the best way to blunt conservatives' attacks on Obama is to accuse them of racism (see previous post). In another email, somebody says she would laugh to watch Rush Limbaugh die. Hard to believe that a network of just 400 might include some people with views like this.
Of course, too much like-mindedness can make you lazy. When liberal or conservative writers close their minds to opposing points of view and settle for recycling the talking-points of their respective tribes, that's not good journalism. But you don't need to listen to their private conversations: you who can tell who they are by reading their copy. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/known_journolisters.html
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The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv.
1. Ezra Klein
2. Dave Weigel
3. Matthew Yglesias
4. David Dayen
5. Spencer Ackerman
6. Jeffrey Toobin
7. Eric Alterman
8. Paul Krugman
9. John Judis
10. Eve Fairbanks
11. Mike Allen
12. Ben Smith
13. Lisa Lerer
14. Joe Klein
15. Brad DeLong
16. Chris Hayes
17. Matt Duss
18. Jonathan Chait
19. Jesse Singal
20. Michael Cohen
21. Isaac Chotiner
22. Katha Pollitt
23. Alyssa Rosenberg
24. Rick Perlstein
25. Alex Rossmiller
26. Ed Kilgore
27. Walter Shapiro
28. Noam Scheiber
29. Michael Tomasky
30. Rich Yesels
31. Tim Fernholz
32. Dana Goldstein
33. Jonathan Cohn
34. Scott Winship
35. David Roberts
36. Luke Mitchell
37. John Blevins
38. Moira Whelan
39. Henry Farrell
40. Josh Bearman
41. Alec McGillis
42. Greg Anrig
43. Adele Stan
44. Steven Teles
45. Harold Pollack
46. Adam Serwer
47. Ryan Donmoyer
48. Seth Michaels
49. Kate Steadman
50. Matt Duss
51. Laura Rozen
52. Jesse Taylor
53. Michael Hirsh
54. Daniel Davies
55. Jonathan Zasloff
56. Richard Kim
57. Thomas Schaller
58. Jared Bernstein
59. Holly Yeager
60. Joe Conason
61. David Greenberg
62. Todd Gitlin
63. Mark Schmitt
64. Kevin Drum
65. Sarah Spitz |
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/how_does_narrat.html
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It appears, based on these leaked emails from a private discussion list, that Ackerman and Drum disagreed about whether it was a good idea to deal with the Jeremiah Wright controversy by accusing prominent conservatives of being racists. However, both Ackerman and Drum agreed implicitly that their concern was "the Obama brand."
This raises questions in my mind about how the narrative emerges.
(a) it emerges out of the efforts of journalists to be objective, however imperfectly they may perform that function based on unconscious biases.
(b) it emerges out of open conflict among biased commentators
(c) it is shaped by the conscious, co-ordinated strategies of biased journalists
These emails suggest something closer to (c). Reading them is like seeing the transcript of a meeting where stock traders plan to manipulate the price of a firm's shares or where a corporation plots how to cover up some wrong it has done to consumers.
Based on these analogies, I have difficulty working up sympathy for the privacy violation involved in publishing these emails. But perhaps the analogies are inappropriate.
It seems to me that some ethical boundaries that I thought existed, or should have existed, have been violated, by those who participated in this mailing list.
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These people are not journalists. They are propagandists with access to and total control of the vast majority of print and mainstream media. They are the public discourse. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| These people are not journalists. They are propagandists with access to and total control of the vast majority of print and mainstream media. They are the public discourse. |
Yes. And then people want to criticize me when my stuff comes from sources other than the MSM!  |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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C'mon, Mises, you don't believe journalists should be objective. You read Matt Taibbi. I also enjoy his work. He has many virtues, but objectivity is not among them.
Secondly, the Daily Caller's characterization of what happened is under dispute.
| James Fallows wrote: |
This is the least scandalous scandal I've ever known about.
I have one question for people who are upset about an email list involving 400+ mainly-liberal journalists and academics: Have you ever been on a listserv? If you have, everything about the dreaded Journolist would be familiar to you. It had all of the virtues, and many of the faults, of the standard internet email list.
Faults: Flame wars. The reality that some people took it way more seriously than others and spent all day composing inbox-clogging IM-style replies. With a wide variety of members, the inevitable reality was that most messages would not be of interest to any given member. And -- as with most of the other listservs I've been on over the years and am still on -- many people, especially the young ones, wrote with an innocent assumption that they were talking within a community, rather than for potential years-later out-of-context quotation. I am chagrined to note that virtually the only thing I ever contributed to this group was a sadder-but-wiser warning that nothing in digital form was ever "private," so people should write only what they were willing to stand behind in public.
In the other listservs I know -- about China, software, aviation, defense, cybersecurity, etc -- some people's careers could be gravely damaged if their least judicious single sentences were used against them out of context years later. I really, really hate to see that done to young people now. "Have you no sense of decency?" is the right question for Andrew Breitbart. It's also the right question for the Daily Caller, whose editor (Tucker Carlson) asked for membership in the dreaded Journolist -- and was turned down -- just before it began seriatim publishing of damaging and out-of-context quotes against young writers. |
Mises, imagine that eslcafe.com was a closed community, protected by a password. Imagine further that you were marginally famous/influential five years from now. Now imagine that I took a lot of your quotes and removed them from their context.
I would be a complete dick, would I not?
These guys agreed on Obama. I am hardly the most fervent supporter of Obama, but the things they said are understandable within a certain context. The grounds for a 'conscious conspiracy' are incredibly weak. |
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