Posts Tagged ‘journolist’

Like Robert Stacy I haven’t done much with Journalist

Posted: July 21, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech
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but to put it simply, its so bad that even Andrew Sullivan believes it’s corrupt and some members seem ready to out themselves before somebody else does.

Brietbart understands how the game works better than anyone

Posted: June 29, 2010 by datechguy in media, opinion/news
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The Weigel stuff had very little to do with Brietbart but he managed to draw aces.

First he gets Weigel to put his side out on this site:

But I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at conservatives. Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean. Yes, I’d trash-talk liberals to Republicans sometimes. And I’d tell them which liberals “mattered,” who was a hack, who was coming after them. Did I suggest which strategies might and might not work for liberals, Democrats, and the president? Yes, although I do the same to conservatives — in February, for example, I told many of them that Scott Brown’s election hadn’t killed health care reform, and they needed to avoid dancing in the endzone, because I was aware of what liberals were saying about how to come back.

That impressed the hell out of Stacy McCain who interviewed him for the Spectator:

Especially after the 2004 election, Breitbart said, liberals realized they had “lost control of the narrative,” and began organizing projects aimed at preventing stories that hurt Democrats from gaining traction in mainstream media. Breitbart compared the Journolist “cabal” to Professor Peter Dreier’s “Cry Wolf” project that offered $1,000 fees to academics for papers pushing back against conservative policy proposals.

By exerting peer pressure within the press corps, Breitbart said, the participants in Journolist influenced reporters like Weigel to adopt their practice of treating Drudge and Limbaugh as enemies, and to suppress story angles that favored conservatives.

So Breitbart takes the blog story of the day and makes it the place where everyone HAS to go. Is he done? Not by a long shot. He follows up with the offer that can’t be accepted or can’t be refused but sure can’t be ignored:

The American people, at least half of whom are the objects of scorn of this group of 400, deserve to know who was colluding against them so that in the future they can better understand how the once-objective media has come to be so corrupted and despised.

We want the list of journalists that comprised the 400 members of the “JournoList” and we want the contents of the listserv. Why should Weigel be the only person exposed and humiliated?

I therefore offer the sum of $100,000 to the person who provides the full “JournoList” archive. We will protect that person’s privacy and identity forever. No one will ever know who became $100,000 richer – and did the right thing, morally and ethically — by shining the light of truth on this seamy underworld of the media.

Glenn Reynolds like McCain calls him a Genius. He’s right.

On the memeorandum thread the reactions are varied Johnson calls him unethical, Vanity Fair says it not possible, other pooh pooh it but Breitbart is in a no lose situation.

If someone comes forward with the items he holds a scoop and a half, but the person in question is marked for life. Breitbart will keep his name quiet but the 100,000 has to be paid somehow. Do we get 12 under 10k payments to circumvent federal reporting laws. Said 100k will have to be claimed as an expense of Brietbart and as income by the recipient. I’ll wager a half decent reporter could trace it, particularly since many would be motivated to do so.

What is more likely is that the stupid thing will be done and the list will be held onto. Breitbart gets a storyline he can come back to forever, gets 100k+ worth of publicity without spending any money and can continue to paint journolist as what he says it is. Oh the left denies it, but can’t refute it without producing the actual archives and there’s the rub.

If Breitbart is right about what was going on there (and I suspect he is) then they don’t dare release it it’s a nail in the coffin of everyone who was part of it. If Breitbart is wrong the only way they can do so is to release it but the left is not about thinking long term, the one day or maybe two story the list would produce is one or two days too many for the left and even if the left isn’t doing what was said there is likely to be at least a few more people who have said things that they really shouldn’t have. They will fight tooth and nail to cover themselves.

What is the smart thing? Klein should release the list himself. If Breitbart is wrong it proves it and becomes a one or two day story. He can even give the dough to the DNC if he wants. If Breitbart is right he should release it anyway, we of the right already distrust them, so the revelations are not going to change things much. The damage to the left is then focused during a time when the left is in trouble anyways.

As I’ve said before it is going to come out sooner or later, if the left has brains it will be sooner, but they are not as smart as Breitbart.

Foster Kamer as Vizzini

Posted: June 28, 2010 by datechguy in media, opinion/news
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Foster Kamer has a post up at the village voice about who smeared Dave Weigel, a gem from the piece:

I’m of the idea that Journolist was a bad idea in practice — because there is always a rat, always — but think that writers should be allowed to be sentient human beings with, you know, opinions about things. Otherwise, hold them in for seven presidential administrations, and the next thing you know, you’re Helen Thomas and your incredible legacy is now marred because you expressed an opinion about your job for the first time in your life that you’ve held in for way too long, that ends up being a “shocker” to people, and costs you your rep.

Take a look at that paragraph and the willful blindness it contains and it tells you a lot about the author. Poor Helen Thomas if only nobody knew what she really thought, we could have admired her in ignorance, just like Alger Hiss.

What annoys me is the title and the premise, Who smeared Dave Weigel? Smeared?

You might say who betrayed Dave Weigel, who outed Dave Weigel, who exposed Dave Weigel who embarrassed Dave Weigel but not smeared.

Smeared implies a falsehood, there is no falsehood here, Weigel wrote what he wrote of his own free will and said what he said.

Calling tea party activists racists, that is a smear. Exposing Weigel’s and Thomas’ true feelings in their own words to the light of day can be called many things but smear is not one of them.

So in the words of Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

If Foster wants to defend Weigel he should take a page out of Stacy McCain’s book:

Ali Akbar called me to discuss WeigelGate and pointed out something: Weigel hung out with us in NY-23, in Boston during the Brown campaign, at CPAC and at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

During all that time, Ali remarked, not once did Weigel do a “gotcha” by disseminating reports of the off-the-record stuff he saw and heard. Whatever vicious snark and gossip Weigel dished out via his blog, or e-mails or Twitter, he did not abuse his journalistic privilege by burning the people who gave him access.

That is the defense of a friend rather than of an ideologue. Weigel is really lucky that he has Stacy McCain as a friend. Stacy will fight for his friends till hell freezes over and then will fight on the ice.

Jim Geraghty is close..

Posted: June 25, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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in this story but no cigar.

Somebody on Journo-List didn’t like Dave Weigel and decided to publish his most furious and incendiary remarks that he thought — unwisely — that he was expressing in confidence.

this jibes with Stacy’s remarks about Washington:

Anyone who has ever worked in DC can testify that in Washington, the more you succeed, the more knives will be aimed at your back.

Geraghty continues:

So what else is on there that, if revealed, could make life difficult for Ezra Klein or Jeffrey Toobin or Paul Krugman or Ben Smith or Mike Allen? Or is the idea that as long as they stay in line, they’ll never have some remark they regret publicized to the world? Did Journo-List evolve into a massive blackmail scheme that ensures no one inside the club will ever speak ill of another member?

This is where he is wrong. There is nothing Ben Smith, Mike Allen, Ezra Klien, Jeffrey Toobin or Paul Krugman could say about conservatives that would get them in trouble. In fact it would only endear them to their customer base. That is why such revelations would never harm them, but for Dave they proved fatal. Why? Remember what I said this morning:

I see no reason why we should give him more consideration than any other journalist. If he gives us a fair shake then we should act accordingly, if not then not.

Unfortunately his job depends on us giving him more consideration than we would give another journalist. It depends on us not considering him a foe. Ann Althouse explains the issue:

So David started letting his need for lefty approval express itself on the email list, the Journolist, where the cool kids were being intimate and snarky. But those other kids were not tasked with covering conservatives. While they might have been embarrassed if the mean things they wrote in the email were ever leaked, they didn’t have careers founded on their suitability for covering conservatives. The risk poor Dave took was of an entirely different nature. Why, Dave, why? Why did you risk the plum job?

Why? Because he trusted his “friends” on the left.

And memeorandum has gone wild on the subject. The Funniest is Ezra Klein:

It was ironic, in a way, that it would be the Daily Caller that published e-mails from Journolist. A few weeks ago, its editor, Tucker Carlson, asked if he could join the list. After asking other members, I said no, that the rules had worked so far to protect people, and the members weren’t comfortable changing them. He tried to change my mind, and I offered, instead, to partner with Carlson to start a bipartisan list serv. That didn’t interest him.

In any case, Journolist is done now. I’ll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That’s not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion. I’m proud of having started it, grateful to have participated in it, and I have no doubt that someone else will re-form it, with many of the same members, and keep it going. Hopefully, it will lose some of its mystique in the process, and be understood more for what it is: One of many e-mail lists where people talk about things they’re interested in. But insofar as the current version of Journolist has seen its archives become a weapon, and insofar as people’s careers are now at stake, it has to die.

Or in other words , “God forbid the public see what was really said by us.” Kind of funny for people whose job it is to get to get people to share with them.

Klein would doubtless say we are being paranoid about what Journolist actually was. It seems to be that he is asking for a consideration that the people on the left that he allowed on “journolist” doesn’t give to the right or the government when republicans are in power.

I also like the implication that Carlson got what he was trying to get. You had better hope that wasn’t what Tucker was after because if it was then he would have already downloaded the lot and is sitting on it. Perhaps Breitbart has it right now and is simply editing with video now to be released to its best effect.

Sooner or later it is all going to come out so, assuming I am wrong about the damage it would cause to your friends. you might as well get it out now, because if we conservatives DO have the content you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be released at a time of our best advantage. After all the left is going to be stuck by disaster this election anyways, might as well get the disaster out of the way when it can cause the least overall damage.

But I don’t think that’s what happened, I think a “friend” of his was pissed over something and decided to nail him, but you never know Ezra I might be wrong, maybe you should release the archives now.

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