Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
David Weigel, the Washington Post reporter charged with covering the conservative movement, resigned on Friday after a few of his less than flattering comments about conservatives were leaked to the Tucker Carlson’s news site, The Daily Caller (via the ever-witty James Taranto).
Weigel—and about 400 other liberal journalists, among them the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, The Nation's Eric Alterman, and the New York Times' Paul Krugman—belonged to an exclusive conversational listserv called JournoList, founded by the precocious Ezra Klein. Andrew Breitbart describes the now disbanded JournoList as, "the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism."
When Weigel vented his frustrations about Matt Drudge to the listserv, a mole at JournaList leaked his e-mails.
Here are some choice cuts:
There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes...
It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like [Matt] Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree....
This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.
Then there are his crass and ubiquitous descriptions of Republicans, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. Just a few months ago, Weigel appeared on the Keith Olbermann show defending Palin, and has defended other conservatives in the past.
Andrew Breitbart, who wants to know who the other 400 members of JournoList are, is offering $100,000 for the full archives of the listserv.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
I'm nominating Conor F as his replacement. Conor doesn't care for most conservative talk radio (gulp, I confess that I don't listen myself, having a job and all), inveighs against Jonah Goldberg, and sees Sarah Palin as an embarrassment- a perfect set of qualifications for the WaPo job!
The beauty of that, though, is that Conor still has some actual center-right instincts- I think that (unlike Weigel) he is skeptical of government-run health care and massive federal spending. Someone call WaPo managing general partner Ezra Klein and put in the nomination.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Weigel's firing was a disgrace, but Conor as his replacement is a wonderful idea.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
That's a terrible idea, PEG: It took me several tries and a couple years to escape DC, and I will not be dragged back! We're all better off just reading Dave Weigel where he lands. For all the understandable criticism of his private words, I've yet to see anyone persuasively argue that his actual work was unfair.
Duane, were I on that beat, or any other, I'd certainly be fair to the folks I was covering, and you're right that I probably fall right of Dave Weigel, and certainly bear less animosity toward Matt Drudge! I am against health care reform, the GM takeover, massive federal spending, etc. But like Dave, I'm also skeptical of orthodoxies of thought. Also, within the movement, being honestly critical of certain people is far more damaging to credibility career prospects than actual liberal views.
Finally, Andrew Breitbart being pretty hyperbolic in describing Journolist. I've never seen the actual content, but it's members disagree enough in public to prove they weren't coordinating a vast liberal conspiracy.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Conor, the listserv doesn't have to order or coordinate anything- just exchange information exactly as it does in real time, away from any non-sympathetic scrutiny. If any industry was sharing information in that way- not making suggestions, just talking- the FTC would have them up on Sherman Act charges in 3 minutes. If conservatives did the same thing and that came out, the VRWC talk would dominate the airwaves for months until the FCC and Congressional Dems had issued regs and passed appropriately targeted laws to address it.
I think that the troops there fully understand what approach is helpful to their cause. And the correlation between actual news management and the preceding Journolist postings is probably overwhelming.
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Hey Conor -- I agree that there isn't a vast liberal conspiracy, but more of a synchronicity of thought--for instance, if someone like Sarah Palin makes a good point about policy, the liberal press will try to take her down a notch. The conservative press does this too, but--because of its smaller numbers--not with the same intensity as the liberal press does.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Duane,
On the question of whether Journolist should've been exclusively open to the left, I've long been on record answering no. An ideologically closed conversation can't help but cause you to become unduly confident in your assumptions.
Emily, your phrase "synchronicity of thought" sounds about right to me, though I don't think the Sarah Palin example is a good one: the folks on Journolist hardly needed a private listserv to form their attitudes about her. And yeah, the conservative press does this, and its smaller numbers definitely make it less problematic.
I remain convinced that the most consequential way liberal media bias manifests itself is the insufficient due the press gives to the unintended consequences of policy. Given $100,000 to remedy the problem, buying the Journolist archive would be the last thing I'd do.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Conor, when I read your piece a couple of weeks ago, my reaction was two-fold.
1) I agree that conservative policy solutions, and reporting on such stories may well be more difficult because the simplistic soundbites are easier to quote- but that says to me not that reporters are unbiased, just that they are shallow and lazy.
2) When the policy goal is one they like, they find a way to explain.
Bartlett and Steele were happy to write nonsense in great detail. When the goals matched theirs, they would do whatever it takes. I don't believe that the 90% of reporters who voted for Obama are all coincidentally incapable of explaining rent control. Or the insurance cost increases of Obamacare. I think that they don't want to explain such things when the result hampers their own ideology.
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Hyperbole can be bad, but Breitbart is in the kind of business where any large sum of money is well enough spent making once-private remarks public. It seems clear to me that JournoList wasn't exactly a vast liberal conspiracy. The number of liberals was only sort of vast, and their exchanges were only semi-conspiratorial. This has been my experience on the right as well. I think the sensational aspect here is that it could all be published!!!! Surprise of the year: even in Teh Internet Age, committing comments to text matters. And that's a good thing -- no hyperbole.
May '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
Duane, you're doubtless right about some reporters, about bias and laziness, but there is a less damning explanation too: most newspapers and Web sites don't cover any issue with depth, and if you're a beat reporter or a TV news producer, facing pressure to publish a bunch of content that draws traffic and eyeballs, you're not going to have the luxury of digging into the indirect effects of whatever it is you're covering -- it isn't that people do the intellectual work on rent control and still print the liberal line, it's that their editor is yelling, "Okay, go cover the evicted folks who are having a press conference outside the apartment house at 4pm, and then at 5 pm make sure you're at City Hall for groundbreaking on the new wing."
Jun '10
Re: Conservative Bashing WaPo Reporter Resigns
My main issue with Weigel is that he isn't really a journalist. Actual journalists don't join with peers and elected officials on the internet to shape news coverage. They don't attempt to manipulate the public's perception of issues like Healthcare Reform. Real journalists report facts. They balance both sides of an issue to help their readers and viewers determine the truth. This fair presentation of important issues is an essential function of the news media. It survives in most local print and broadcast newsrooms. Unfortunately, balanced coverage isn't as common at the national level as the Weigel's of the world attest.