Thread: Journolist scandal eclipses the real problem: News bias

Journolist scandal eclipses the real problem: News bias

By Patrick Maines

The "Journolist" kerfuffle — surely you've heard of it by now — says more about the state of media criticism than it does about the state of journalism. Worse, it provokes a microscopic narrative about the thoughts and motives of opinion writers that only diverts attention from the macroscopic subject — the public's perception of bias among mainstream news reporters.

In the event that you've been vacationing abroad, or have better things to do than monitor pundits' opinions of themselves, Journolist is a now-defunct listserv once made up of some 400 liberal commentators, activists, academics and "think tank" ideologues. It was assembled (and then disassembled) by The Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

Himself a liberal ideologue, Klein was obliged to close his listserv when some of its contributors' e-mails were leaked. Most notable were those of David Weigel, who resigned his position as a blogger for the Post when it was revealed that he had said on the listserv disparaging things about prominent conservatives. Most of the conservative targets have since responded with expressions of outrage, some of it over the top. The best of the folderol, though, has been issued from the Journolisters themselves.

Writing a blog meant to put some distance between himself and other members of the listserv, Time magazine's Joe Klein says that he was one of the more moderate members of the group and " had to defend (himself) against onslaughts from (his) left"; that he "politely ignored" the occasional suggestions on the listserv of "joint action."

Pedaling even faster, Ezra Klein, Journolist's paterfamilias, dismisses any idea that the listserv was anything other than "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." And why, then, did he close it down? Well, "not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong," but because its archives were being used against it, and "people's careers are now at stake" (emphasis added).

Beside the point

Lost amid the hyperbolic accusations and overwrought defenses — hiding in plain sight, as it were — is the reality of Journolist's relative insignificance and harmlessness. Far from being a clandestine forum of mainstream reporters, gathered together to bend an unsuspecting public to their political will, Journolist was a group largely comprised of non-journalists and opinion writers — most but not all employed by small and politically marginal publications such as The Nation, The New Republic and Salon.

Recognizing the difference between reporters and opinion writers, and between the mainstream media and small political publications, is important for two reasons: Like most opinion writers, the Journolisters' appeal and influence extend not one millimeter beyond those who agree with them; by focusing on the real or alleged shortcomings of such people, we ignore the far more important problem of the perception of bias being practiced by mainstream journalists. It is this perception, among other media failures, that has continued to erode the public's trust in this nation's Fourth Estate. The continual neglect has also opened the door — kicked it open, really — for conservative media in all forms.

The polls over the past decade lay out the problem very clearly. In 2008, for instance, the Pew Research Center found, by 70% to 9%, that the public thought journalists wanted to see Barack Obama, rather than John McCain, win the presidential election. More recently, Rasmussen Reports published a poll in April with the finding that 55% of U.S. voters think news media bias is a bigger problem than large campaign contributions.

Worse still for the media themselves, the perception of bias is felt most acutely by conservatives who, according to a recent Gallup poll, are both the largest and fastest growing ideological group in the country. In business terms, it's a growing market that the legacy media have failed to effectively engage.

Bias? What bias?

Given these kinds of numbers, and the mainstream media's tenuous hold on readers and viewers, one might expect that editors and reporters are doing everything they can to change this perception. If that is in fact happening, however, it's not much in evidence. For the most part, the subject of media bias and what to do about it is treated, if at all, rather like a Zen koan — one of life's insoluble problems.

Thus do we hear more these days about why it's impossible for journalists to be completely objective, or why objectivity itself is a passé concept, than we do about objectivity as journalism's sine qua non. This has the effect, if not the intention, of leaving undisturbed the kind of journalism that is resented by people who do not share the political slant that they perceive in the news.

Whether from a commitment to the public or to self-preservation, the mainstream news media need to find a way to deal with the perception of a liberal bias. One obvious way to do that would be to hire more people who consider themselves conservatives. Another that wouldn't require an ideological litmus test would be to hire editors who oblige the most exacting kind of standards of objectivity from all of their reporters, conservatives and liberals alike.

There is another just as pressing reason why the mainstream media need to be perceived as practicing objective journalism, and it has nothing to do with drawing in the robust, if now-distant, conservative audience. Going forward, the news media are going to have to find ways to distinguish themselves from news aggregators and bloggers. One way to do this is by providing in-depth and objective coverage of domestic and foreign affairs. ("Objective" being the key word.) Today's bloggers and aggregators have neither the talent — in most cases — nor the resources to do so themselves.

Sideshows such as the Journolist affair do plenty to get folks on the left and right agitated and incensed. But the real focus should be not on purveyors of opinion, but on the news reporters and other journalists who claim objectivity while delivering to readers and viewers content that is perceived as having a strong and unmistakable whiff of liberal bias.

Patrick Maines is president of The Media Institute, a non-profit organization that is funded by media and communications companies, including Gannett, parent of USA TODAY. The institute promotes a strong First Amendment, sound communications policies and excellence in journalism.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/fo ... 4_ST_N.htm

JournoList

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

JournoList (sometimes referred to as the J-List)[1] was a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media with 400 journalists, academics and others, all with political views ranging from centrist to center-left to leftist. Ezra Klein, an American blogger for the Washington Post and a columnist for Newsweek, created the online forum in February 2007 and shut it down in June 2010. He controlled the forum's membership and limited it to "several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics".[2] Posts within JournoList were intended only be made and read by its members.[3] Klein defended the forum saying that it "[ensures] that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions".[2]

[edit] Descriptions of the group by its members
According to JournoList member Jonathan Chait, "[T]he group as a whole did not jointly participate" in any particular discussion thread. "Almost every discussion was limited to a small percentage of the group that was interested in the topic. Most people ignored most of the topics".[4]

Klein justified excluding conservatives from participation as "not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology".[5]

JournoList member, and Time magazine columnist, Joe Klein said the off-the-record nature of the forum was necessary because “candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations privateâ€

Excellent article. I am surprised to see that it was printed in USA Today.

WR Hearst must be rolling over in his tomb.
Yellow Jouralism has been around for decades.
We have seen it all before but never, the blackout for all clear disclosure for information without bias and distortino of the facts as right now.

Anyone out there know the truth about the Amnesty MEMO. that was circulated right Judge Bolton put a "stay" on sn-1070.
Interesting timing don't you think.
Or are we all so disconnected about what is heppening here in America?

Are we being taught to fear the Governemt, who is rapidly becoming the enemy? We all need to think seriously about the answer to that.

Going forward, the news media are going to have to find ways to distinguish themselves from news aggregators and bloggers. One way to do this is by providing in-depth and objective coverage of domestic and foreign affairs.
("Objective" being the key word.)
Today's bloggers and aggregators have neither the talent — in most cases — nor the resources to do so themselves.

It seems that the lazy liberal media is still taking direction from a mothership. It becomes obvious when a person googles an article and the results are identical with each so called reporter putting their name to it.

So, these folks make a lot of money "reporting" plagiarism and parroting a dictated position. Sounds like conspiracy to me...IMO

From 2014. Why would these lazy people change the way they are doing business when all they have to do is be a conduit of an agenda without having to do any real work?

JournoList 2.0 Discovered

Posted at 3:02 pm on August 5, 2014 by briansikma

A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon. Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNN reliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.

“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.

In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.

Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim.

In mid-July, Terkel and Grim jointly wrote a piece about a leftwing effort to push Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) to run for president. The pair of reporters heavily quoted Erica Sagrans, a fellow member of Gamechanger Salon and leading organizer of the “Ready For Warren” effort, and cited Billy Wimsatt’s support for the project. Wimsatt’s work as founder of Gamechanger Salon and the reporters’ own membership in the group, along with Sagrans’ membership, went unreported.

In a subsequent piece Terkel again reported on the effort to recruit Warren for a presidential bid, and a previous piece by Grim contrasted Warren with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

A former New York Times freelance columnist who now works as an energy and commodities reporter for Thomson Reuters is also a member of Gamechanger Salon. Anna Louie Sussman is listed as an “investigative reporter and journalist” on the Gamechanger Salon membership list, and while her beat focuses on energy issues, she has also writes about “local and international human rights and social justice issues” according to her website.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, a prominent and well-known periodical of leftwing political and social thought. She is also a member of Gamechanger Salon and a regular opinion writer for the online edition of The Washington Post.

A late-July column for the Post by vanden Heuvel entitled “Building a progressive alternative to ALEC” hit on a theme regularly mentioned on Gamechanger Salon: liberals must build an alternative to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Lisa Graves, who leads the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and – according to e-mails reviewed by Media Trackers – regularly promotes material developed by CMD to attack ALEC and the right-of-center lawmakers who tend to make up the majority of ALEC’s active legislative membership.

Vanden Heuvel suggested in her column that liberals support the efforts of the American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange – ALICE (a leftwing counterpart to ALEC) – and the Progressive States Network. Gamechanger Salon member Prof. Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin Madison founded ALICE. Vanden Heuvel in a 2012 column for the Post wrote about Rogers founding ALICE.

Not once does she appear to disclose her membership in Gamechanger Salon along with some of the very people she writes about.

Jordan Flaherty was, as of last year, a producer for Al Jazeera America television. He is also listed as a member of Gamechanger Salon and for a while he occasionally blogged for The Huffington Post.

In addition to working at the left-leaning American Sustainable Business Council, David Brodwin writes an online column for U.S. News & World Report. Brodwin is a member of Gamechanger Salon, and on July 14 he published a columnarguing that small business owners support a minimum wage increase. Fascinatingly, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Labor relies on Brodwin’s American Sustainable Business Council to argue that very point in a recent “fact-sheet” advocating for a minimum wage hike.

Dozens of members of the leftwing network have contributed columns to The Huffington Post, and others have written opinion pieces for several other publications. The full extent of the network’s activity and effectiveness at amplifying and coordinating left-leaning messaging campaigns has yet to be fully explored.

http://www.redstate.com/briansikma/2...-0-discovered/

CNN, HuffPo, Reuters Contributors, Reporters Part of Leftwing Network

By: Brian Sikma |

August 05, 2014




Credit: TED/SallyKohn.com

A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon. Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNN reliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.

“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.

In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.

Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim.

In mid-July, Terkel and Grim jointly wrote a piece about a leftwing effort to push Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) to run for president. The pair of reporters heavily quoted Erica Sagrans, a fellow member of Gamechanger Salon and leading organizer of the “Ready For Warren” effort, and cited Billy Wimsatt’s support for the project. Wimsatt’s work as founder of Gamechanger Salon and the reporters’ own membership in the group, along with Sagrans’ membership, went unreported.

In a subsequent piece Terkel again reported on the effort to recruit Warren for a presidential bid, and a previous piece by Grim contrasted Warren with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

A former New York Times freelance columnist who now works as an energy and commodities reporter for Thomson Reuters is also a member of Gamechanger Salon. Anna Louie Sussman is listed as an “investigative reporter and journalist” on the Gamechanger Salon membership list, and while her beat focuses on energy issues, she has also writes about “local and international human rights and social justice issues” according to her website.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, a prominent and well-known periodical of leftwing political and social thought. She is also a member of Gamechanger Salon and a regular opinion writer for the online edition of The Washington Post.

A late-July column for the Post by vanden Heuvel entitled “Building a progressive alternative to ALEC” hit on a theme regularly mentioned on Gamechanger Salon: liberals must build an alternative to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Lisa Graves, who leads the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and – according to e-mails reviewed by Media Trackers – regularly promotes material developed by CMD to attack ALEC and the right-of-center lawmakers who tend to make up the majority of ALEC’s active legislative membership.

Vanden Heuvel suggested in her column that liberals support the efforts of the American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange – ALICE (a leftwing counterpart to ALEC) – and the Progressive States Network. Gamechanger Salon member Prof. Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin Madison founded ALICE. Vanden Heuvel in a 2012 column for the Post wrote about Rogers founding ALICE.

Not once does she appear to disclose her membership in Gamechanger Salon along with some of the very people she writes about.

Jordan Flaherty was, as of last year, a producer for Al Jazeera America television. He is also listed as a member of Gamechanger Salon and for a while he occasionally blogged for The Huffington Post.

In addition to working at the left-leaning American Sustainable Business Council, David Brodwin writes an online column for U.S. News & World Report. Brodwin is a member of Gamechanger Salon, and on July 14 he published a column arguing that small business owners support a minimum wage increase. Fascinatingly, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Labor relies on Brodwin’s American Sustainable Business Council to argue that very point in a recent “fact-sheet” advocating for a minimum wage hike.

Dozens of members of the leftwing network have contributed columns to The Huffington Post, and others have written opinion pieces for several other publications. The full extent of the network’s activity and effectiveness at amplifying and coordinating left-leaning messaging campaigns has yet to be fully explored.
http://mediatrackers.org/national/20...ftwing-network

Inside “Gamechanger Salon,” The Left’s Action Network

Posted at 1:50 pm on
August 4, 2014
by briansikma

Note: I co-wrote and researched this piece with Nathan Schacht.

An extensive membership list and a calendar of events offer insight into a leftwing network first revealed by Media Trackerslast week. Gamechanger Salon is a members-only Google group run by Billy Wimsatt for forward thinking and top-level political activists on the Left. Members of the group include senior level political hands at NARAL, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO and Planned Parenthood, among dozens of other groups.

Media Trackers first uncovered the network in records obtained through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor. The membership list released today is far more detailed than the list released last week, and the calendar offers insight into the group’s plans for coordinated action in the future.

Wimsatt, the moderator of Gamechanger Salon according to a member policy manual, currently works as chief ideas officer at Gamechanger Labs, an incubator for leftwing political and social action with the motto, “R&D for the movement.” In 2008, Wimsatt worked for the Obama campaign and the Ohio Democratic Party, according to his LinkedIn profile. A former columnist he is the author of several books and contributed columns to the Huffington Post until 2012.

In 2010 he co-wrote a column about voter guides for the Huffington Post with the controversial Van Jones, who resigned from the Obama Administration in 2009 amid outrage over his advocacy for a convicted cop killer and signature on a petition saying the Bush Administration willfully allowed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to happen.

The detailed version of the membership list contains names and group affiliations for members, as well as brief biographies and contact information for some members.

A book club section of the list contains recommended reading material and occasional quick reviews of the books explaining why they are important for liberal activists and organizers. Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church makes the list because, as Wimsatt notes in his review, “it’s a F#$@ING BRILLIANT and provocative book about the art and science of organizing that in part shows on many levels why right-wing evangelicals are organizing circles around us (even though much of what they’re selling is snake oil).”

Another book that Wimsatt recommends to the membership is Mockingjay, the third and final installment of The Hunger Games series. According to Wimsatt’s review, “Third Hunger Games Book. People say it’s great and complex parable of revolution – and it will help us get ready to leverage the next 2 movies better.”

Other portions of the extensive membership document recommend movies, songs, television shows, recommended websites and blogs, and goals for the online Gamechanger community. Two of the goals listed are “Recruit 200 key community-based organizers, especially women and people of color,” and “Recruit 100 key diverse bloggers, movement journalists, and pundits.” Another goal involves theorizing about a “TED-like conference for folks.”

To facilitate interaction among the groups represented in Gamechanger Salon, a calendar detailing upcoming events is maintained with ample notes about the importance and focus of each particular item.

For August, two training events and a festival are on the calendar. On September 23, liberal groups appear to be working on holding a day of action registering voters ahead of the mid-term election in November. A “Trick or Vote” event is scheduled as a national action step on October 31.

The full calendar that Media Trackers obtained from a non-password protected link (that has since been closed) and the full membership list are below.

Gamechanger Salon member list (Excel file): Gamechanger Salon

Gamechanger Salon calendar (PDF): Movement Calendar – Calendar 2014

Originally published at MediaTrackers.org.

http://www.redstate.com/briansikma/2...ction-network/

Interesting lists. the Gamechanger Salon list includes their comments basically their liberal resume. In one instance Brandon Silverman brags about hacking Facebook . After finding was to cheat on line contests for money, do you think these folks have changed their ways?

About me, I was one of the founding staff members of the Center for Progressive Leadership, a leadership development organization that focused on state-level political training. Over the course of my tenure there, we trained over 6,000 community organizers, nonprofit leaders, future candidates and elected officials. It was a fascinating and really rewarding experience, especially because it involved working with a lot of partners (where I met a lot of people on this list) and seeing first-hand what state-based progressive activism & leadership looks like right now. I also briefly ran a rather surreal project for several years that used online organizing to win money in a massive online giving contest run by Pepsi. We ended up winning around $3 million that all went to small progressive nonprofits, most of whom are all on this list. Sadly, once they figured out what we were doing, they shut down the contest (On that note…if anyone on this list is ever participating in contests that involve online voting, please please reach out to me. We built a rather huge list of progressive folks who all love to vote in online contests for progressive groups.)These days, I'm leading up a new technology start-up called CrowdTangle that is working on building new organizing tools for the movement. We're spending a lot of time hacking Facebook and trying to find ways to make it more effective for social justice groups. We have two tools we've built to date and they're already being used by folks like MoveOn, 350.org, InterOccupy, AFSCME, the Lady Gaga Foundation and a bunch of others. Personally, I grew up in a very conservative small town in Florida but moved to the northeast for school. I lived in Philadelphia for 7 years after graduating from college. I'm currently in Baltimore where my wife is getting a PhD in public health. I spend my free time coding useless but fun apps, brewing beer, playing ultimate frisbee, exploring the trails in Maryland with my wife, reading graphic novels, trying to figure out ways to have political conversations with my parents and playing with my dog (in no particular order). 1/8/13

Gamechanger Salon member list (Excel file): Gamechanger Salon

Gamechanger Salon calendar (PDF): Movement Calendar – Calendar 2014