Posted on 07/26/2010 1:42:30 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Matthew Yglesias and other Journolist coconspirators don’t want to hear it, but conservative journalists are independent actors who kowtow to no one and no movement.
One of the rationales that the Journolisters use to justify their now-defunct secret listserv is that everyone does it, even conservative journalists. But this is simply not true. Most conservative journalists do not belong to secret listservs.
Wall Street Journal editorial page editors Paul Gigot, James Taranto and John Fund don’t. “I don’t know of anything like this,” Gigot said Sunday on Fox News’ Journal Editorial Page Report.
The Washington Examiner’s Bryon York agrees. “Is there a big conservative-J[ournolist] out there?” he asked recently on his Twitter feed. “I don’t know about it.”
York was responding to an article by the Washington Post’s longtime media reporter, Howard Kurtz, who on Friday wrote:
There is no reason to believe that some conservative commentators don’t have similar discussions [or listservs].
But Kurtz has offered absolutely zero evidence to support his accusation and there is every reason to doubt its accuracy, because as Gigot observed:
I always view myself in competition with other media organizations, even conservatives. We want to get the story and beat them. We don’t want to tell them what we’re doing and feed some sort of common line.
Fund agreed. He acknowledged that he subscribes to some listservs to gain knowledge about narrowly tailored technical topics such as election laws. However, he said, he does not participate in any secret conservative listserv designed to direct and coordinate media coverage.
“I don’t believe that competitive journalists would actually get involved in something like this,” Fund said. “That’s why these people look like they’re something other than journalists.”
The fact of the matter is, of course, that the Journolisters are left-wing political activists masquerading as journalists. Yet, during a Twitter debate that I had last week with Journolist coconspirator Matthew Yglesias, he said:
I’ll make all the #journolist emails [that] I have public when all the archives of all conservative lists are made public.
I told Yglesias that I don’t know of any secret conservative listservs; and that although I write for three conservative publications — NewsReal Blog, FrumForum, and the American Spectator — I have never been invited to participate in any such listserv either.
And if I had been so invited, I rather doubt that I would have participated. After all, although a proud card-carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, I value my journalistic independence and intellectual integrity too much to coordinate my writing with some hypothetical conservative politburo or Journolist-serv (which, thankfully, doesn’t exist in the real world).
Yglesias bristled at my comments and grew impatient with my Tweets. “So can I read the archives of conservative listsserves?” he asked. “Or do conservatives not write emails?”
He then continued:
You think there are no conservative email lists? How stupid are you?
…You’re obviously very stupid…
I think you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever had a Twitter-fight with.
I don’t blame Yglesias for getting frustrated. Facts, after all, are stubborn things. And the simple fact is that Journolist has no known conservative counterpart. Yet, this didn’t stop Yglesias from demanding of another Twitter follower that he “join my crusade for disclosure of conservative email lists.”
But what lists?! Unless and until Yglesias can “name names,” he best refrain from making specious and unfounded accusations.
In short, everyone doesn’t do it, no one should, and Matthew Yglesias (and Howard Kurtz) should be ashamed for suggesting otherwise.
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You can follow John Guardiano on Twitter: @JohnRGuardiano
the left is everything they accuse the right of being. Since they do it, they assume the right must do it as well
remember those manufactured angry mobs that the left accuse the right of having? The left manufacture these mobs, so they assume the right must be doing them as well. The left send plants into the right wing movement, and they assume the right does that to the left
remember during the health care debate. A left winger pretended to be a doctor when she stood up and as a democrat a question
True.
I knew that the left bussed in professional protesters but I never knew there was an official name for it, astroturfing, until Pelosi falsely accused the right of it.
The “twitter fight” is funny! I have the mental image of Yglesias swinging a purse every time he says “stupid.”
You think there are no conservative email lists? How stupid are you?
…You’re obviously very stupid…
I think you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever had a Twitter-fight with.
This guy sounds like a teenager fighting with his parents when they found pot in his bedroom.
It’s time to grow up kid.
clinching his limp little fists and stamping his tiny feet in anger...lol
I always view myself in competition with other media organizations, even conservatives.
That is one thing the Left does not understand and cannot tolerate - competition. That requires individuals, although sometimes on teams, vying for a winning result rather than a collective outcome. That is why the Left is trying to condition us and our kids not to keep score in athletics.
Competing ideas are very dangerous to the Left. Thinking people reject the Left's ideas. Repetition of the same false or misleading ideas are necessary for the Left to instill the lies as truth. The purpose of the journolist is to have that repetition coming from every direction and a daily basis.
Sounds like Yglesias has got his panties twisted in a wad.
I want to slap this waste of a human being.
Typical lib. fighting tactics — when you’re losing the argument, start projecting what you do onto the other person, and when that fails, call them names and then refuse to debate.
Actually National Review Online, The Corner is a lot like Journolist. It is a members only blog.
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