July 20, 2010, “‘Call Them Racists’,“ Wall St. Journal, James Taranto, “How “journolists” tried to suppress the news”
“The “Journolist” scandal has deepened with new revelations that participants in the now-defunct email list for ideologically approved journalists–-no conservatives allowed–engaged in efforts to suppress news damaging to then-candidate Barack Obama [vs then candidate Mrs. Clinton]….
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 [Obama].
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.”
Most damning is a long quote from a Spencer Ackerman [with Daily Beast as of 2018], who worked for something called the Washington Independent:
“…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….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.”
Smashing somebody’s [sic] through a plate-glass window seems like an odd way to thread a needle, but atrocious prose is the least of the problems here. The problem here isn’t bias, either.
Assuming Ackerman was an opinion writer rather than a straight-news reporter, he was entitled not only to hold his opinions but to express them.
But Ackerman was not engaging in a public debate; he was privately strategizing about how to suppress the news. And his fellow journolists, while disagreeing with him, did so “only on strategic grounds”:
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast something_–Obama’s substantive agenda–with this crap.”
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going [to] change the way politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
If anybody on the list objected in principle to Ackerman’s idea of slandering people, including a fellow journalist, as racist, the Caller missed that part of the story. (We’ll be happy to report it if a Journolist member would care to supply us with the evidence.)
What Ackerman proposed was to carry out a political dirty trick in order to suppress the news and thereby aid a candidate for public office. That’s about as unethical as journalism can get.
The final product of this debate was a pathetic “open letter,” which, as we noted at the time, was signed by 41 self-described “journalists and media analysts,” nearly all of whom were affiliated with universities, left-wing publications or left-wing think tanks. The letter does seem to have been more of a collaborative effort than we guessed back then: the Caller lists eight people who contributed to its drafting. Even so, what self-respecting journalist shares a byline with 40 other guys?
“The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times,” the Caller reports, but thereafter was deservedly forgotten until now. Obama weathered the Wright revelations, but it seems a stretch to give Journolist the credit (or, if you prefer, the blame) for that. On the other hand, are there other stories they did succeed in suppressing? We cannot know as long as the full Journolist archives are secret.
These revelations also belie Journolist founder…[and current editor-at-large and founder of Vox. Before that, he was columnist and editor at the Washington Post, a policy analyst at MSNBC, and a contributor to Bloomberg] Ezra Klein‘s defense of the enterprise back in March 2009:
“As for sinister implications, is it “secret?” No. Is it off-the-record? Yes. The point is to create a space where experts feel comfortable offering informal analysis and testing out ideas. Is it an ornate temple where liberals get together to work out “talking points?” Of course not. Half the membership would instantly quit if anything like that emerged.”
This statement is true only if parsed as a denial that an email list is an ornate temple. Plainly the list was a forum where liberals got together to work out talking points, as evidenced by that “open letter.”
[List of media activists who in 2008 objected to ABC News questions to Obama in Hillary-Obama debate.…Excerpt from letter to ABC News appears in WSJ article below as follows: “”Neither Mr. Gibson nor Mr. Stephanopoulos lived up to these responsibilities. In the words of Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos turned in “shoddy, despicable performances.” As Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher describes it, the debate was a “travesty.” We hope that the public uproar over ABC’s miserable showing will encourage a return to serious journalism in debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees this fall. Anything less would be a betrayal of the basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public.””]
(continuing):"Worse, it was a forum where people employed as journalists conspired to suppress the news–and, by doing so “off the record,” used journalistic ethics as cover.
In 2009 Klein wrote that Journolist’s policy of excluding conservatives was “not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology.”
“Call them racists.“ That’s empiricism for you!…
The Daily Caller [7/20/2010] reports ABC News’s “tough questioning” of Obama at a 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton “left many of [the Journolist participants] outraged":
“George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.””…[During 2008 primaries for being perceived to favor Hillary over Obama]
…………………..
Added: Re: Letter of outrage sent to ABC News written by political activists, April 2008, referenced above:
4/21/2008, “The Herd of Independent Minds,” WSJ, James Taranto
“Last week’s ABC debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made lots of liberals unhappy. In particular, they did not care for the questions that moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos posed to Barack Obama, including the one we noted Thursday about his friendship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.
We learn from blogger Tom Maguire that a group of 41 “journalists and media analysts” have signed an “open letter“ to ABC in which, according to The Nation (with which five of the signatories are affiliated), they “condemn the network’s poor handling” of the debate [between Obama and Hillary]. Here’s how the letter closes:
“Neither Mr. Gibson nor Mr. Stephanopoulos lived up to these responsibilities. In the words of Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos turned in “shoddy, despicable performances.” As Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher describes it, the debate was a “travesty.” We hope that the public uproar over ABC’s miserable showing will encourage a return to serious journalism in debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees this fall. Anything less would be a betrayal of the basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public.”
“Neither Mr. Gibson nor Mr. Stephanopoulos lived up to these responsibilities. In the words of Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos turned in “shoddy, despicable performances.” As Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher describes it, the debate was a “travesty.” We hope that the public uproar over ABC’s miserable showing will encourage a return to serious journalism in debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees this fall. Anything less would be a betrayal of the basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public.”
Let the record show that this journalist thought the Ayers question was a good one and that Obama’s evasive answer was revealing. (We don’t have an opinion on the debate as a whole, as we were out Wednesday night and neglected to set our TiVo.)
Maguire notes that the signers of the letters are not exactly journalistic all-stars:
“There are precious few of what would normally be considered actual journalists, and many, many left wing bloggers and advocates passing themselves, for today’s purposes, as “media analysts.””
It’s true that only two of the 41 signatories list affiliations with mainstream media outlets: a guy from the Baltimore Sun and a guy from the Guardian (a foreign newspaper!). There is also a person with an epicene name who claims to be with “former Chicago Tribune.” The rest are affiliated with left-wing opinion magazines, blogs and universities.
Yet you don’t have to be on the payroll of a major publication or broadcast outlet to be a journalist. What you do have to do is do journalism. And this is where the 41 signatories fall pathetically short.
It is highly unlikely that this “open letter” was the product of 41 people collaborating; such a large group could not possibly produce anything in such a short period of time. Most probably one person drafted the letter, maybe got input from a small number of others, then emailed the finished product out to a huge list and received replies from 41 people minus the number who actually worked on it.
Commentary is a perfectly legitimate form of journalism (of course, we would say that). But going on record to express the exact same opinion as dozens of other people is about as far from journalism as you can get. Surely one of the “basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public” is to refrain from putting their byline on work that is not theirs.
Reliable Sources
If you thought the New York Times had gotten carried away with anonymous sources [as of April 2008], wait till you see this one. From a Times story on last week’s ABC debate kerfuffle:
“The outcry on Thursday was on a much larger scale, reflecting, at least in part, broader frustration with the news media as a whole.
“Congratulations for taking journalism to a new low (who even knew that was still possible),” said one person who posted to the ABC News Web site, and identified himself or herself as a college professor who had assigned the debate as homework. “I almost felt like I needed to apologize for suggesting that they watch the debate, but instead we used your sorry display as a way of talking about how the media covers politics today.””
Blogger David Downing notes: “The Times isn’t merely protecting the source’s identity here, the Times actually has NO IDEA WHO THE SOURCE IS!“ Apparently the Times missed this report: “The Information Age was dealt a stunning blow Monday, when a factual error was discovered on the Internet.”
Another Times piece has one of the better explanations for anonymity we’ve ever seen:
“[John] Kerry, however, endorsed Mr. Obama shortly after the New Hampshire primary. To this day, the Clinton and Kerry camps disagree over whether Mr. Kerry had made promises to intermediaries not to take sides.
He then publicly criticized Mr. Clinton’s conduct before the South Carolina primary. “And he was dead to us,” said one prominent Clinton supporter who is, in his words, “not authorized to trash Kerry on the record.””
It must be tough to go through life without being authorized to trash Kerry on the record.”…
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Maguire notes that the signers of the letters are not exactly journalistic all-stars:
“There are precious few of what would normally be considered actual journalists, and many, many left wing bloggers and advocates passing themselves, for today’s purposes, as “media analysts.””
It’s true that only two of the 41 signatories list affiliations with mainstream media outlets: a guy from the Baltimore Sun and a guy from the Guardian (a foreign newspaper!). There is also a person with an epicene name who claims to be with “former Chicago Tribune.” The rest are affiliated with left-wing opinion magazines, blogs and universities.
Yet you don’t have to be on the payroll of a major publication or broadcast outlet to be a journalist. What you do have to do is do journalism. And this is where the 41 signatories fall pathetically short.
It is highly unlikely that this “open letter” was the product of 41 people collaborating; such a large group could not possibly produce anything in such a short period of time. Most probably one person drafted the letter, maybe got input from a small number of others, then emailed the finished product out to a huge list and received replies from 41 people minus the number who actually worked on it.
Commentary is a perfectly legitimate form of journalism (of course, we would say that). But going on record to express the exact same opinion as dozens of other people is about as far from journalism as you can get. Surely one of the “basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public” is to refrain from putting their byline on work that is not theirs.
Reliable Sources
If you thought the New York Times had gotten carried away with anonymous sources [as of April 2008], wait till you see this one. From a Times story on last week’s ABC debate kerfuffle:
“The outcry on Thursday was on a much larger scale, reflecting, at least in part, broader frustration with the news media as a whole.
“Congratulations for taking journalism to a new low (who even knew that was still possible),” said one person who posted to the ABC News Web site, and identified himself or herself as a college professor who had assigned the debate as homework. “I almost felt like I needed to apologize for suggesting that they watch the debate, but instead we used your sorry display as a way of talking about how the media covers politics today.””
Blogger David Downing notes: “The Times isn’t merely protecting the source’s identity here, the Times actually has NO IDEA WHO THE SOURCE IS!“ Apparently the Times missed this report: “The Information Age was dealt a stunning blow Monday, when a factual error was discovered on the Internet.”
Another Times piece has one of the better explanations for anonymity we’ve ever seen:
“[John] Kerry, however, endorsed Mr. Obama shortly after the New Hampshire primary. To this day, the Clinton and Kerry camps disagree over whether Mr. Kerry had made promises to intermediaries not to take sides.
He then publicly criticized Mr. Clinton’s conduct before the South Carolina primary. “And he was dead to us,” said one prominent Clinton supporter who is, in his words, “not authorized to trash Kerry on the record.””
It must be tough to go through life without being authorized to trash Kerry on the record.”…
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