Kathleen Parker writes a column in the Washington Post that asks questions and she describes the gotcha "flap", as she sees it, over the revelations from leaked emails from Journolist, a list-serv Erza Klein started with approximately 400 members associated with media in some way, shape or form.
Those leaked emails the Daily Caller has been doling out has shown collusion between media members in how to frame the national debate on a variety of topics, such as Sarah Palin where they discussed what should be the general lines of attack or how Obama's "non-official campaign" (meaning Journolist members) could directly help Obama win the 2008 election by distracting from the Jeremiah Wright issue.
Just friends at the "watering hole" as she refers to the email list and their discussions?
Usually folks that go to a "watering hole", such as writers from CNN'S TIME, Bloomberg News, The Politico, The New Yorker, Nation, Mother Jones, New America Foundation, Human Rights Watch, just to name a few, do not collude and work in conjunction with each other to coordinate a line of attack and use their individual publications to further that line of attack publicly.
Do not forget that Jared Bernstein, chief economist for Vice President Joseph Biden, served in 2008 as an economic adviser to the Obama campaign, was part of that "watering hole", being made aware of every line of attack being discussed and in some cases implemented, as I have shown here with the help of Google search engines.
Started by prodigal blogger Ezra Klein for a few friends, it grew in numbers and popularity, attracting a few mainstream luminaries (Joe Klein of Time magazine) along the way. But mostly it was a consortium of far lesser-known folks (academics, mid- to low-level producers, etc.) who enjoyed the camaraderie of the like-minded.
Does she have the entire list of members? So far, last I saw, the public only knows of less than a hundred names of the 400 members on the list?
How does dear Kathleen know what it consists of in totality?
It is one of the last two paragraphs of the two page attempt to change the national discussion that really caught my eye.
In the meantime, we have to ask ourselves: Are we better off never having the ability to speak offhandedly among friends, to say in private what we could never say in public, to think aloud and uncensored?
Question for Kathleen: If and that is a huge IF, the 400 or so members, are a "consortium of far lesser-known folks", bloggers, op-ed columnists, academics, mid to-low-level producers, etc.... then why can they not say in public what they say in private?
My answer to Kathleen's question here would be yes, we are better off, because innate honesty would dictate that people, so-called opinion journalists, should have the balls to say exactly what they are thinking on their own publications.
To say one thing in private (if 400 people can be called private), but say another thing in public on your blog or newspaper implies a certain dishonesty on the part of the writer.
If you are an opinion writer and you cannot say something out loud, publicly, then perhaps you should ask yourself if you should be saying it at all, or even thinking it.
The Daily Caller has been exposing the mindset of the Liberal journalists who were part of Journolist and shining a light on their media bias.
The Daily Caller deserves their "Gotcha" moment.
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