Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Martin Schram: Journolist Scandal Damages Washington Post's Integrity

From Scripps News Service:
Weigel had previously also joined another blog, a debate-and-chat group called "Journolist" that was formed by another Post blogger, Ezra Klein. Its members were limited to liberals or leftish centrists -- conservatives were banned. There Weigel cut loose -- opining such frat-chat yuks as: Matt Drudge would do well to "set himself on fire," Rush Limbaugh should die of a heart attack and so on. (Apparently assuming remarks to lots of journalists would stay off the record (Mr. Weigel, meet a fellow humorist, Gen. McChrystal.) Weigel's wee-giggles were collected and outed in the conservative media. Weigel resigned from the Post; but that is not the point here. The integrity of The Washington Post is.
BTW, when I was working on the PBS issue, years ago, I was repeatedly told that it was impossible to classify journalists as "liberal" or "conservative." Furthermore, it was wrong to do so, because it could lead to blacklisting...

So, how come it apparently was OK for Journolist to classify reporters as "liberal" (or further left) and to blacklist those who were conservative? In other words, I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the 400 members of Journalist weren't practicing McCarthyism, themselves.

BTW, I'd wager Breitbart never gets his list of Journolist members, nor the archives of listserv. It would be the end of the career of the person who turned it over. That's worth more than 100K to any journalist who wants to work again.

They'd be blacklisted, and they know it.