The smarty pants set, breezily dismiss the contents of JournoList, the group made up of hundreds of mainstream journalists, bloggers, activists and Democrat policy wonks. The reasoning goes this way: how is it shocking that a bunch of like-minded people want to get together and chat? I mean, that’s just human. They’re young and liberal and brash, who cares?
Except, in this case, these people are in positions of power in the mainstream media. Matt Lewis reports this:
Regardless, the record shows Scherer had very harsh words for Fox — a point that would be less relevant had Scherer not recently won a seat on the board of directors of the White House Correspondents Association.
Why does this matter? As you may recall, there is a battle taking place to determine which media outlet will get Helen Thomas’ front-row seat for White House briefings. Many believe that Fox News should get the seat.
As FishbowlDC recently reported, the White House Correspondents Association’s “board plans to make final decisions by August 2nd…”
One wonders if Scherer, who holds the “magazine” seat on the board will recuse himself from the vote, based on the notion that his past comments imply he cannot fairly help decide this matter.
A seat on the board is powerful. According the the White House Correspondent Association’s website, “A nine-member board of directors, elected by correspondents, addresses access to the chief executive; coverage arrangements; work space arrangements; logistics and costs for press travel to accompany a president on the road.”
The stakes are high, and in a close election, one vote might matter.
Also, there is, you know, the small thing of journalists claiming to be objective. Think the list should be dismissed as irrelevant? Mark Levin published a list. I’m including them all here:
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
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”
as 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.
These people are not satisfied to control those mediums, though. They stink at radio and they’re challenged online, so they (many of them) want to eliminate their ideological competition and feel justified in doing so.
From the Daily Caller again:
“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.
“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”
These are the same people who triumph stories, make up news and create narratives with only a shred of anecdotal evidence, or no evidence at all, to push forward the liberal cause.
In fact, even as I write this, Shirley Sherrod, the fired/unfired, shamed/defended NAACP woman accuses FOX news of racism when they have done nothing she accuses them of doing. But you know, context.
Byron York asked JournoList target Rush Limbaugh how he felt about death threats:
And it is not just that they hate how I became who I am. They literally hate ME. They hate me because I am the most prominent, effective and unrelenting voice of conservatism and they have not been able to stop me. These people and their tactics are not new, we’ve seen them before in other countries and other times. They want to destroy contrary and opposition voices and views. They will climb over the law and the people to achieve their aims. Earlier in this administration, the president and his hacks targeted me, his party targeted me and their groups targeted me. They are all the same. They are leftists, disguised as lawyers, judges, scholars, professors, teachers, reporters, anchors, senators, representatives, legislative aids, congressional staff, federal bureaucrats, etc. There is NO Media. We know that now. There is just an incestuous relationship among all these various groups and a revolving door connecting them all.
The apologists for JournoList should be ashamed and should recognize the threat to a free Democracy when they see one.
