Free Republic

Anybody who accused members of the media of being little short of dedicated advocates of the liberal propaganda machine and adjuncts of the left wing of the Democratic party were routinely dismissed as right-wing nuts. Critics who dared to suggest that a large number of journalists worked in lock step as avid promoters of the ultra-left policies of the ultra-left wing of the Democratic party were inevitably portrayed as right-wing nuts. Suggesting that reporters could be doubling as left-wing propagandists were always greeted as the results of some kind of mental disorder peculiar to anyone with conservative views. It turns...

When cultural and religious conservatives talk about the whole Journolist media mini-storm, here is the kind of quotation from The Daily Caller coverage that has them hot and bothered. This particular burst of rhetoric comes from the DC story about members of the Journolist — or JournoList — sharing their feelings about the conservative feminist that they already loved to hate, only moments after she entered national politics — Sarah Palin. Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official...

Don't make excuses for the Journolisters. They subverted journalism and the pursuit of truth for politics and the pursuit of power. John Tabin has entered the fray over Journolist, the now-defunct secret listserve of several hundred liberal journalists, activists and academics. Tabin agrees that much of what the Daily Caller has reported about this cabal is extremely troubling and reprehensible. To wit: • the Journolisters' attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright; • their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as "racists" and "bigots"; • their...

Ezra Klein's attempt to pass off JournoList as just a water-cooler confab seems pretty much exploded by this latest Daily Caller piece. I mean: what is the point of putting out an email with the subject line "The Line On Palin" if there isn't an actual line? And what is this if not organizing a media narrative: “Okay, let’s get deadly serious, folks. Grating voice or not, ‘inexperienced’ or not, Sarah Palin’s just been introduced to the country as a brave, above-party, oil-company-bashing, pork-hating maverick ‘outsider’,” Kilgore said, “What we can do is to expose her ideology.” What you mean...

New e-mail messages published by the Daily Caller Thursday show a coordinated effort by the JournoList's members to destroy Sarah Palin the moment she was named John McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008. Some even discussed how the former Alaska governor's decision to have a Down Syndrome baby rather than abort it could be used against her. As the attacks ensued, the Nation's Chris Hayes wrote, "Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get." Witness America's so-called journalists conspiring to destroy a...

Blogosphere, please join me in celebrating the birth of Cabalist, the wittily-named successor to Ezra Klein's infamous Journolist, the listserv of liberal bloggers, pundits and academics that inadvertently brought down (very temporarily) the ex-Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel, and which is now the subject of an endless and embarrassing (for certain former Journolist participants) investigation by The Daily Caller, which has discovered e-mail chains suggesting that certain Journolist members were secretly devising partisan campaigns to advance Democratic Party interests. (Message to normal Goldblog readers: This post will consist mainly of inside-journalism double-meta-navel-gazing; we will return to our regular programming shortly....

Sarah Palin has thrown in her two cents about the Daily Caller’s Journolist leaks on her Facebook account. As David Corn noted on his Twitter account, she seems to miss the rather important point that Journolist is expressly a liberal listserv – and especially that most of those quoted in today’s story work for avowedly liberal publications. Still, it’s worth a read. This may all have the result of making Spencer Ackerman wildly famous. It’s encouraging for commonsense conservatives who are frustrated with media cover-ups and biases to see truth revealed.Remember the infamous “Journolist” – the listserv chat group of...

Howard Kurtz whines that “[Conservative] candidates seem to regard it as an affront when reporters challenge them on their past statements and inconsistencies, which is a basic function of journalism. They are avoiding or limiting interviews with all but the friendliest faces as a way of circumventing the press. And some of them delight in skewering the mainstream media, a tactic that plays well with their base.” It’s interesting that Kurtz doesn’t mention the Obama administration’s attempt to boycott Fox News, and its ongoing complaints about that network. Conservative aversion to the media is indicative of a key fact about...

Ben Jealous, give it up. Your organization, the NAACP, is no longer needed. How do I know? I read it in a press release today from a group of "Nevada Conservative Leaders and Grassroots Activists," which told me that "In 2010, the NAACP has outlived its usefulness." Thanks, white people! A lot of white conservatives are upset with the NAACP this week for daring to talk about racists in the Tea Party movement. The group passed a resolution asking the Tea Party to condemn the racists in its midst. It didn't denounce the entire Tea Party, as simple-minded folk like...

There has been a not-so-subtle shift in the way the media regard Sarah Palin. The old conventional wisdom was that Palin was a washed out, brainless bimbo. The new conventional wisdom is that she is a potential President of the United States. Mark McKinnon, writing in the Daily Beast, thinks that Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012, but will likely be defeated. McKinnon states some very obvious reasons why Palin will run, from her fundraising acumen, to her creative use of media, both old and new, and the rise of the "Mama Grizzlies," a more picturesque way to...

Palin, Paul, and Angle tactics and disappearing media add up to bad news for democracy. Sarah Palin is living the dream. Since the dawn of time, or at least since the 1960s, politicians from both parties, though conservatives in particular, have yearned to block out the press. They have pined for a way to commune with their voters without the pesky media distorting their message. Now, a couple of incipient trends are increasingly making it possible. On one hand, the reportorial ranks have been decimated, leading some to fear the end of that journalistic species known as the local political...

Earlier this week, we gave you a few staggering factoids on the state of the U.S. newspaper industry. You know, cheery stuff like how there have been roughly 35,000 newspaper job losses or buyouts since March 2007. Or how 166 newspapers have either shut down or stopped putting out a print edition since 2008. Or the fact that the U.S. print sector lost more than 24,500 jobs between September 2008 and September 2009. Good times. It's all from a new report by the World Association of Newspapers and Newspaper Publishers. The stats seem even more bananas when viewed in the...

In tracking the response to the launch of the site and petition to draft Sarah Palin for the Chairmanship of the RNC, we have seen varied reactions ranging from enthusiasm, to curiosity, to skepticism, to racist bigotry, to deafening silence. One common denominator in near uniformity, however, is the consensus that Michael Steele is, at best, ineffective as Chair of the RNC for one or more of the following reasons. Steele V. Limbaugh Praising ACORN’s Bertha Lewis Steele Doesn’t Know If GOP Ready To Lead RNC chairman doubts GOP will win back the House this November Republican National Committee spent...

The prospect of the November elections becoming a replay of 1994 has Democrats running scared everywhere except, apparently, the White House, where the famous Obama cool keeps everyone’s emotions in check. Sure, losses are expected in the first midterm of a new president, but let’s not lose too much sleep over it. Indeed, some of the president’s allies think all the attention on the Democrats is misplaced, that the real replay of ’94 is happening on the Republican side, with a new generation of self-described young guns maneuvering to topple the old guard. In this scenario, Republican whip Eric Cantor...

The religious right's fascination with Sarah Palin befuddles me. I just don't get it! Her lifestyle and qualifications fall short of what I would expect the religious right to embrace in a candidate for high office. By way of disclosure, I fit the profile of the religious right - I am a social conservative with strong faith values. Thus when Senator McCain invited her to join his presidential ticket I was open to this unknown outsider, but within weeks I became quite underwhelmed by her candidacy. Yet the religious right mostly went gaga over her, seeing her as a religious...

Chris Matthews on Friday called George W. Bush and Sarah Palin know-nothings. Chatting with California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown on "Hardball," the MSNBC host also called the Republican candidate for governor in that state Meg Whitman a know-nothing. "What is it in the American psyche or character that says, if you don`t know anything, you`re somehow an average person or average guy and you have horse sense?" asked Matthews. "What is it about people that keep picking people like George W. Bush to be president? And you see these people like Sarah Palin out there with fans." It seems in...

This afternoon, I wrote a long, rather huffy post on liberal media bias. It was prompted by 1) those reporters who were caught on tape trashing Sarah Palin, and 2) the David Weigel affair. I have deep-sixed the post, however — spiked it. I can huff about media bias again, as I have in the past. (And I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll — not budge the house an inch.) Let me instead say this: I think many of my conservative colleagues are far too gingerly when it comes to liberal media bias. Far too timid, delicate, and forgiving....

Jonathan Bernstein asks: Sullivan believes that Palin's birth story for her youngest son is implausible. I think he has a good case for that, for what it's worth. As I've read over the last two years, I've seen three possible explanations. The first is the wild one, that the baby isn't really hers; she's covering for someone else's inconvenient pregnancy and has adopted that child. The second is that she was an irresponsible mother, and took terrible risks given the dangerous nature of the pregnancy. The third is that she made the whole thing up, or most of it: she...

Carla Marinucci, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Political Writer, had some sad news for her liberal readers this morning: Sarah Palin is alive and kicking — and kicking ass in California. Carla Marinucci cited Sarah Palin’s speech on Froiday night, which raised a record $200,000-plus for the Cal State University Stanislaus Foundation, money much needed for a school in a recession at a time when donors are low on cash as well. Wrote Carla Marinucci: “After months of buildup, including investigations, outrage and celebration, the former Alaska governor’s trip to California’s farm belt over the weekend proved beyond a doubt that...

A writer masquerading as a conservative who was supposed to be covering the conservative movement has quit his job under fire at the Washington Post. The writer, David Weigel, left after it came to light that he had made disparaging remarks about conservative personalities on a private email list of liberal journalists. The scandal involves The Washington Post, Reason magazine, and a network of “independent” on-line publications with funding from billionaire George Soros and multi-millionaire gay mogul Tim Gill. In a major understatement, the Post ombudsman, or consumer advocate, says the scandal will affect the paper’s standing among conservatives. But...