My attitude towards the immensely tedious Journo-List Scandal is that this general topic is minimal -- it's fuss for profit. (Ezra Klein as Dark Liberal Overlord? The hell? ) Though, strangely, as Greater Wingnuttia has dug in with the make believe about having discovered a there there, they have genuinely come up with some fascinating nonsense. Take for instance this open sewer wound letter from degenerate half-ape (and not the better half, the half that has all the reprocessed badly-digested termite husks stuck to the fur) Brent Bozell:
The following is an open letter sent by MRC President Brent Bozell to Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli on July 28, 2010, regarding the scandal surrounding JournoList, a private listserve group created by blogger Ezra Klein when he worked at The American Prospect and maintained by him after he joined the Washington Post in 2009.
Dear Mr. Brauchli:
The JournoList scandal is getting worse every day and The Washington Post is at the center of it. Blogger Ezra Klein ran the operation and at least three other staffers were members. (Blogger Greg Sargent claims he wasn’t a member after he joined the Post.) In addition, at least one member of Slate and two from Newsweek, also owned by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, were members.
The almost constant revelations of political activism and journalistic conspiracy raise an enormous number of questions about Post policies, professionalism and ethics. As a conservative, and therefore a member of the movement JournoListers sought to demonize, I feel Post readers are owed full disclosure.
Any understanding of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics makes clear this list and the Post’s involvement violate a number of ethical guidelines. In fact, much of the code seems to have been ignored. Here are just a few examples from the code.
“Journalists should:· “Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting,”There is only one way for the Post to move forward from this fiasco – through transparency. You need to be forthright about the Post’s failings and give readers enough information so that we know just how serious this really was and what can be done to restore your paper’s credibility.
· “Recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public's business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection,”
· “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,”
· “Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.”
Fun!
Klein of course was hired though not as a reporter but rather as someone with an Opinion, and the WaPo, dim as the people who run it admittedly are, was presumably aware that he was at the time and has been ever since somewhere basically indistinguishable, ideologically, from Chairman Mao, if by "Chairman Mao" you mean "someone not in fact Chairman Mao who would only look especially far left to the smug dingbats at the WaPo editorial board who have placidly laid their heads on Overton's Sill so as to readily facilitate getting their empty skulls brutally smashed by wingnut ape-men repeatedly slamming shut Overton's Window."
The revelation that Mr. Ezra communicated via email with similar hippie fellow travelers like the notorious radical bomb-heaver Joe Klein (whose name is an anagram for either "Stalin" or "William Ayres") are certainly not shocking, but nevertheless -- and this is the key bit -- at the same time and simultaneously they are utterly meaningless in regards to the Journamalism Codes Bozell cites, for reasons that involve reading them and thinking about them in a cursory fashion and then desultorily chuckling.
BUT -- and this is the key bit, forget what I said about the other bit being the key bit, this is the key bit -- by Bozell's logic, we are now entitled to Ask Probing Questions regarding the private correspondence of every other writer for the Washington Post who expresses a particular ideology.
I, obviously, support this.
Do we know that Charles Krauthammer does not correspond with, say, Kathryn Jean Lopez in order to Coordinate Coverage? HOLY SHIT! WE HAVE EVERY REASON TO SUSPECT HE PROBABLY DOES!
Release the emails! Transparency! Rule of law!
The public demands maximum exposure to the very likely highly intimate personal private emails between Charles Krauthammer and Kathryn Jean Lopez!
... actually, the public just probably threw up in their mouths there a little. But you catch my drift, I'm sure. Grab some antibiotics stat and maybe you can keep from catching anything more lingering.
MAS. Wank Hard. (Fox news, you know, exists. As does, God help us, Politico...)