I imagine that the journalism profession has always attracted more than its fair share of people who are left of center. So in a way, the Journolist does not come as any great surprise. But what does stand out about it is the glaring in-your-face nature of the whole thing.
You see, the old school liberals in journalism, even though they were left-of-center, wanted to be journalists first and ideologues second. There was a code of professionalism, admittedly not always followed, that called on them to put the pursuit of truth first. (How one defines the truth is always the question.) Many of them would not even register to vote, or at least not register to vote with a party affiliation, because of they wanted to somehow conform to this code.
JournoList stands out because of the hubris of this new batch of liberal journalists. Forget old school; they are quite content to pass along emails and concoct plans to label people as “racist” who happen to raise questions about Jeremiah Wright.
The old timers were journalists first, liberals second. The new crop is clearly made up of those who are liberals first and journalists second. Indeed, their journalism is not an end in itself but a means to achieving their liberal ends. When the New Left began its Long March Through the Institutions in the sixties, it began with the universities and other centers of power. It is culminating in the media world.
And what a choice they have made.
Theodore H. White warned in The Making of the President 1972:
The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about–an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties, and mandarins.”
The Making of the President 1972 (New York: Antheneum, 1973) p 245
Oscar Wilde offered, “In America the President reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever.”
But there is good news in all of this. Absent the alternative media on the Internet–these guys would never have been caught. They would have been able to maintain the charade that they are “working journalists” and quietly continued with their plots and schemes. They are no doubt continuing to communicate with each other in the same manner that they did on JournoList.
But the veil has been torn from their faces. And their “analysis” has been revealed for what it is: political hackery.
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