Busted. Proof That Far Left Media Hacks Are Colluding to Spin National News at JournoList

This is a photo of Dave Weigel.

Dave Weigel is holding a “Teabag Them Before They Teabag You” doll.

Dave was hired as the “conservative writer” for The Washington Post despite his leftist leanings.

Dave is also a member of JournoList.

Leftist media hack and WaPo journalist Ezra Klein founded Journolist with far left crank Joe Klein from TIME magazine in February of 2007. Klein admitted that Journolist was an “insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.” But, you had to be a leftist to join this group. It was an exclusive club. And, it grew to include 400 of the most prominent leftist American journalists who shared ideas and helped spin the far left narrative in the state-run media. This is where far left cranks colluded to spit out the DNC’s talking points and to defend President Barack Obama’s radical agenda.

Last week Dave Weigel was outed as a member of Journolist and resigned from his position as “conservative writer” for The Washington Post. The left was hoping this would be the end of the story. They were wrong. Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart announced that he would reward $100,000 to anyone who could provide the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected.

Of course, this was too enticing a story for the left to ignore. In response to the news of a reward, JournoList member Ben Smith mocked Breitbart on his popular blog at The Politico:

This is a classic case in which secrecy produces wild imaginings. There aren’t many good conspiracies involving 400 people, some of them ideologues, some columnists, some mainstream media types like me who enjoyed access to that conversation, as I sometimes enjoy access to private conservative conversations at venues like New York’s off-record conservative Monday Meeting.

But that’s also a lot of money for a working journalist. I called Breitbart just now with a modest proposal: I’d sell him my own 55 contributions to the list, many of them just copies of blog items, all fairly dull — for a mere $5,000.

Of course, Ben Smith doesn’t want the truth to get out about JournoList, so he deflected the story by using Alinsky tactic #5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon… You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

But, unfortunately for Mr. Smith and the rest of the 400 far left JournoList cranks, there’s evidence that this group of prominent leftists work together to organize and promote their agenda in the state-run media. Tom Maguire found one clear example in 2009 of the Journolist members colluding on their talking points.

How great is the JournoList, that off-the-record electronic salon where liberal journalists and policy gurus can exchange views, and which is emphatically *not* an echo chamber?

Let’s see – Matt Yglesias of JL on the AIG furor – it’s a distraction:

But it’s not healthy to just go ’round and ’round in circles over this issue endlessly. If 18 months from now the economy’s still shrinking and unemployment’s at 15 percent, nobody’s going to feel particularly happy about the fact that we stuck it to some scumbags from AIG back in early ’09.

JL founder Ezra Klein on the AIG furor – its a distraction:

News of Bernanke’s “money from helicopters” maneuver is below the fold on the Wall Street Journal‘s front page (though they do have a good roundup of expert reactions elsewhere on the site). Same goes for The Washington Post. Everyone, however, has continuing, above-the-fold coverage of AIG’s bonuses, which are about one-ten thousandth monetary value of the Fed’s move.

Noam Scheiber, JL member, on the AIG furor – it’s a distraction:

I have to say, I’m starting to find the obsessive “what did Geithner/Obama know and when did he know it” line of questioning a little tedious. Yes, it’s worth establishing a rough chronology so we know if public officials are telling us the truth. But the endless preoccupation by my colleagues in the media–when did the Fed tell Treasury, when did Treasury tell Geithner, when did Geithner tell Obama–is getting a little ridiculous. This just wasn’t a huge substantive mistake. It was a small substantive mistake–we’re talking about a tiny fraction of the $200 billion we’re floating AIG here–and a huge political mistake. I’m just not sure how helpful it is to reconstruct the genesis of a political mistake in painstaking detail when we’ve got these huge substantive issues to deal with.

Kevin Drum (gotta be JL) – it’s a distraction:

I don’t, frankly, care all that much about the AIG bonuses. The only reason AIG isn’t in Chapter 11 is technical (they’re too big to fail!), so morally I don’t see any reason not to treat them as if they were in Chapter 11 like any other failed company. That means employees stand in line for their bonuses along with all the other creditors. On the other hand, this whole thing really is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, and Tim Geithner and the United States Congress have better things to worry about.

And, finally, Ben Smith from The Politico– It’s a distraction:

AIG reality check

The horse has, of course, long left the barn on this, but a trader emails with amazement on the all-consuming AIG bonus story:

The Fed yesterday committed to buy $1.5 trillion in assets, and all that we are talking about today is $146 million in bonuses for traders at AIG. I understand the politics and the optics of the situation but this is getting ridiculous. People need to get some perspective.

Just to do the math, the bonuses are equivaent to .001% of just today’s new government spending.

By Ben Smith 02:32 PM

This is just one example of how far left cranks are colluding to promote the radical the progressive agenda. Obviously, this was not an isolated incident.

If the JournoList archives ever are produced in full it would be the largest media scandal of all time.