JournoList Flap: A Ton Of Indictments In Search Of A Crime

Not having been a member of the now-defunct JournoList, I do not have any empirical evidence on hand to evaluate, so I am at a loss to be able to say something definitive about it. That said, having followed the various "disclosures" that have emerged about the list, it seems to me that the substance of the indictment against its membership is this:

1. JournoList members traded ideas with each other.

2. Some of those ideas were daft.

3. Daft ideas were greeted with criticism by JournoListers.

4. Subsequently, the daft ideas cited in the disclosures were never acted upon in the real world.

5. But because someone had a daft idea, we should be concerned, even though said daft ideas never showed up in anyone's work.

What seems clear to me is that JournoList, if it coordinated anything, coordinated good sense. It provided a place where people could have impulsive ideas and then police against the bad impulses -- where people could feel free to test whether an idea is a mistake and draw on a trove of wisdom so that you can learn from that mistake before you actually make it.

Along similar lines, we have today's disclosure from the Daily Caller, in the form of a story titled, "Journolist debates making its coordination with Obama explicit". The headline is true! But what it leaves out is that the "debate" led to a rather "explicit" end result. Per Greg Sargent:

But way down in the 13th paragaraph, the story quotes a post from the very same thread in which J-List founder and Post blogger Ezra Klein excplicitly rules out any such coordination:

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, the founder of Journolist, quickly jumped in: "Nope, no message coordination. I'm not even sure that would be legal. This is a discussion list, though, and I want it to retain that character," he wrote.

In other words, the headline on this story could have been: "J-List founder ruled out conspiracy."

So, impulsive idea suggested, impulsive idea denied! It's one thing to criticize someone for the actions they take. But for the actions they DON'T TAKE? That doesn't seem sane.

This may be a bit of a balky metaphor, but actors have this thing called "rehearsal." And rehearsal is supposed to be a safe place for creative minds to test out all of their ideas. Some of which are daft! But the whole point of rehearsal is to take chances, without getting your head filled up with the fear of failure. In fact, failure is supposed to happen in rehearsal. And then a director says, "No, do less of that, and more of this." And hopefully, you do enough of the smart things and limit your daft things, to make a good performance.

Of course, once you are in front of the audience, your work gets rightly scrutinized. BUT IT'S ONLY THE FINAL PRODUCT THAT GETS REVIEWED. You're not supposed to be held responsible for the things you test behind the scenes, and then never follow through on.

Obviously, people disagree with this. They have the daftest ideas of all.

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Comments

[Robustus2]

01:26 PM on 08/01/2010

Arrogant elitists, posing themselves as geniuses and coordinating their propaganda narratives is an old scheme. Their customers, the readers abandonning mainstream media for diverse internet news sources, have been voting on this conduct with their feet over the decades. We are twenty years into advocacy journalism, that will doom the MSM as a reliable source of information.

[some guy93848]

12:40 PM on 07/28/2010

"It's one thing to criticize someone for the actions they take. But for the actions they DON'T TAKE? That doesn't seem sane."

OK. How about this [self-described insane] article by the same author, quoting a HuffPost contributor?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/13/my-dinners-with-dubya-bus_n_157535.html

Occasionally he [George W. Bush] gets a phone call from Andy Card, his chief of staff, who, as I understand it, is in the West Wing meeting with the head of the F.A.A. to determine when Washington's Reagan National Airport will be safe to completely re-open (some flights began operating earlier in the week). Each time the phone rings, I hope the president will excuse himself to join them. But he doesn't. Over the phone, the president tells the men to "get that airport opened up!" and then heads to bed.

Of course it's different when 'actions they DON'T TAKE' is written in the context of George W. Bush's presidency.

If journalists approached all stories on the same level, the main stream media probably wouldn't be going through a slow and painful demise. The way they are struggling is actually quite undignified as demonstrated by this listserv. Like a prehistoric mammoth trapped in a tar pit, Journolist only serves to make the main stream media's decline into insignificance occur that much faster.

[realtruthseeker]

02:40 PM on 07/28/2010

Collusion, whether effective or not, is still a violation of the code of ethics.

Those that broke the code, need to go. That is all.

[realtruthseeker]

11:46 AM on 07/28/2010

they did a tremendous disservice to all true reporters and their publications.

theirs is a sad legacy.

[saltpeter]

12:11 AM on 07/28/2010

Would the JournoList be anything like the GOP-devised talking points issued by Roger Ailes to his "reporters' to spew on and on about ad nauseum whether those talking points had any basis in fact or not. Sorry, Journalists talking about their job and a "news organizations" leader talking to the hierarchy of the Republican Party for cues on what to cover are entirely different things. nice try, Fox news, at deflecting your TOTAL LACK OF JOURNALISTIC ETHICS with the whole Shirley Sherrod fiasco last week. Just the latest and most egregious example of poor, inaccurate, and straight up made up reporting courtesy of Fox News.

[GorBud]

05:21 PM on 07/28/2010

Fox only reported the story AFTER the dismissal of Ms Sherrod. In the end it would have been better if the story was ignored by everyone. Dept of Ag and WH got a little ahead of themselves. Don't think Fox made up anything. When full story came out EVERYONE had egg on their face. Did you notice that when Ms Sherrod was telling the first part of the story the NAACP group was clapping her poor treatment of the white farmer. Just like Rev Wrights' church where cheers and howls follow his racist rants. But as usual Fox overdoes coverage of almost any controversial subject that they think reflects badly on the left side of the Democratic Party. MSNBC balances the scale a little but it has no viewers. When race is involved it seems both sides are get a little nutty.

[saltpeter]

07:02 PM on 07/28/2010

It seems the Right are the ones who what to phrase EVERYTHING in the scope of black and white. Fox was reporting the story (without bothering to check the validity of the edited video) because it fit into their narrative that every African-American public servant from Obama to Van Jones to Shirley Sherrod secretly begrudge whites and are using their positions of power to demonize and demoralize whites. They have ZERO proof of those accusations, it's simply the way they want to scope the issue of race and politics in this country to their willfully ingorant audience who live in a state of constant irrational fear.

But thanks for admitting that Fox doesn't have any journalistic integrity and are using the so-called journo-list as a means to distract from their LATEST (but, unfortunately, not last) attempt to misappropriate the facts to serve their RNC-inspired talking points. Fox has historically been shown to be the "news" source with the LEAST factually informed viewers. That's not "over-doing" it, that's blatantly misleading your audience with NON-FACTS while avoiding discussing the FACTS.

[Indie3000]

12:04 AM on 07/28/2010

It is obvious Ezra disbanded this list because he was embarrassed by it's contents. Anyway you slice this argument, journolist is at least proof of unethical journalism and at the most a left wing conspiracy. If O'Reily, Hannity, Limbaugh and a bunch of other conservatives where caught discussing ways to shut down MSNBC, liberals would be rioting in the streets. (For those who dont know this: people on journolist were discussing ways to shut down FOX News) Also, comments were uncovered that in 2008, many on the list were discussing ways to mitigate the reverend wright scandal that obviously hurt obama by either not reporting on it or hammering on other stories so the public forgets it. The worst one I read on journolist was about calling conservatives racist,.... Here is the quote:

“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,” Ackerman wrote on the Journolist listserv in April 2008. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

[realtruthseeker]

02:26 PM on 07/27/2010

The words 'integrity' and 'objective reporting' were forgien to these policy wonks as they appear to be to most of the commenters here at this site.

[agxphoto]

02:14 PM on 07/27/2010

JournoList sounds like it was cliquish and distasteful, but I doubt they did anything outright wrong as far as crimes go. What'd they do? Compromise their integrity? How is trading a set of emails much different than knocking back a beer with colleagues?

While they may have lowered the regard or opinion some people had of them: well, how is that much different from any other unwinding after work?

I'm just not so sure that there would be enough evidence of leadership within one of these discussion groups to convince me that some type of cabal was running things. Even if they could coordinate one or two points, I'm not so sure that would constitute an organization effective enough to carry out systematic plans.

I think this looks more like a watercooler club or people unwinding at a bar after work. JournoList just doesn't look like it was an effective commercial trust.

Is that what the infraction is supposed to be? That this media coverage was actually a cross-organization coordinated "trust" type of activity?

They're free people. They don't live isolated lives any more than the rest of us do. What does it matter if these colleagues talk to each other over an email network?

If it's a criminal trust with respect to its commercial effects, that might be something else; but, I don't see anyone bringing that up.

I think these people were just embarrassed to be in this club, eventually.

[realtruthseeker]

02:23 PM on 07/27/2010

you seem to have an extremely low threshhold for integrity.

[realtruthseeker]

01:16 PM on 07/27/2010

By colluding, they rendered themselves propagandists.

The only honorable outcome that is available to them is dismissal.

[quoteme]

01:21 PM on 07/27/2010

LOL. There's no evidence that actual collusion occurred. Of the two "plots" uncovered, the Rev Wright horror story was basically the McCain campaign platform and Palin's fraud to ensnare the pro-life voters was never picked up by the MSM.

Try again, but this time, with effort.

[realtruthseeker]

01:32 PM on 07/27/2010

Not only is there evidence, you do not seem to be aware that even mentioning it (collusion) is a breach of ethics.

No my statement still stands. By colluding, they rendered themselves propagandists.

[quoteme]

01:50 PM on 07/27/2010

Read Bob Mackey's comment in this thread. As an actual member of that list, he states that the Daily Caller edited out what didn't fit the plot.

How's that for ethics?

[quoteme]

01:08 PM on 07/27/2010

FOX news is on 24/7 telling our Congress how to VOTE and some of you are sad that Liberal journos like to talk about their feelings.

A hypocrisy so foul that it is unbelievable. Just like Palin's Wild Ride.

[realtruthseeker]

11:33 AM on 07/27/2010

Fox News or Fixed News. The choice is yours.

Fair and balance or adultrated and contrived.

[quoteme]

01:23 PM on 07/27/2010

Lucky for you they are one and the same. The pretty outer shell hiding the inner toxic goo.

[KayJay90]

01:40 PM on 07/27/2010

"Tired of thinking for yourself? Let Fox News do it for you."

[realtruthseeker]

11:31 AM on 07/27/2010

Does the code of ethics mean anything to you?

Those that broke the code need to go. period.

[realtruthseeker]

11:30 AM on 07/27/2010

When they chose to collude they lost the right to call themselves objective reporters.

They became, in a word, propagandists.

[GabeSmall]

11:52 AM on 07/27/2010

They chose NOT to collude. Read the article.

[Joe Dallas]

12:50 PM on 07/27/2010

They the did chose to collude. Do you really believe the article stating that they didnt collude to be credible.

[KayJay90]

01:46 PM on 07/27/2010

If, by your definition of collusion, the JournoList bloggers colluded on the Sarah Palin/TriG birth mystery based on her own story about the flight to Dallas and back in April 2008 -- colluded to give her a break, to lay off the story, to do her a favor, citing the "Eww" factor (as if that ever really stopped a true investigative journalist!).

Sarah Palin's latest Facebook whine about the "dark and demented conspiracy regarding my son, Trig" does nothing but HIGHLIGHT that the JournoList e-mailers never talked about TriG at all, just her and her strange story about the events leading up to his alleged birthdate.

I just hope that some of those indicted journalists react like angry bees to Palin's accusations, and do their due diligence.

[realtruthseeker]

01:53 PM on 07/27/2010

you mention indicted journalists and due diligence in the same sentence.

These indicted journalist have lost their integrity as well as their credibility to report objectively. They have rendered themselves to be propagandists, not reporters.

[jgallery]

10:59 AM on 07/27/2010

I'm sure the conclusion would be the same if this group had been:
George Will, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, and the Fox people.

[realtruthseeker]

11:36 AM on 07/27/2010

is this your rationalization for their breaches in ethical behavior?

[KayJay90]

01:47 PM on 07/27/2010

You know what? You should really define "breaches in ethical behavior", as it pertains to the Right Wing Media and as it pertains to the JournoList e-mails.

[chrish]

10:55 AM on 07/27/2010

"It's one thing to criticize someone for the actions they take. But for the actions they DON'T TAKE? That doesn't seem sane."

Case in point: Shirley Sherrod.

[Poppop1952]

11:37 AM on 07/27/2010

This is nothing different than the Neocons have done, like oh maybe lets say, "Swiftboating" John Kerry, or how about completely distorting what someone says and destroying a career, like Shirley Sherrod. When Neocons like Coulter, Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh do it it is patriotic discourse, when Liberals do it it is Socialist propaganda.

[realtruthseeker]

11:37 AM on 07/27/2010

the mere suggestion of colluding with each other is a breach of ethics.

[Wendy Johnson]

01:45 PM on 07/27/2010

Piffle. If you seriously believe that, then you should support Beck resigning too, after that internet flap about him r a p i n g a girl in the 90's.

[jasdmd0]

10:48 AM on 07/27/2010

Sounds like a decent plot for a new Oliver Stone conspiracy based movie! LOL! (That is if any studio heads would want to fund a project like that given his recent rant)