Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger. He’s also a former member of JournoList and a friend of Ezra Klein. Any or all of that may explain why he’s twice used his platform at the Post to claim that there is a media conspiracy surrounding the Daily Caller’s publication of JournoList archives:

The real media conspiracy here is on the right. It’s a conspiracy to pretend that there’s a story here when there isn’t one.

Yes, you read that right. He’s accusing the right of a media conspiracy. It’s the sort of fabulist, black-is-white inversion of reality we’ve come to expect from Media Matters, not from the Washington Post. So let’s take a look at Sargent’s case for a right-wing media conspiracy and see if it passes the belly laugh test.

In his first stab at this claim, he took issue with the headline for one of the Daily Caller’s pieces:

It has this huge headline: JournoList debates making its coordination with Obama explicit. But way down in the 13th paragraph, the story quotes a post from the very same thread in which J-List founder and Post blogger Ezra Klein explicitly rules out any such coordination…In other words, the headline on this story could have been: “J-List founder ruled out conspiracy.”

If the Daily Caller was part of a right-wing conspiracy, why bother to include the line Sargent just quoted, or the one that came immediately afterwards which also depicts a list member rejecting the idea? Wouldn’t the conspiracy be more successful without any contradictory evidence? What Sargent wants us to blithely ignore is statements like this from Todd Gitlin of Columbia University: (more…)

My friend and thriller-writing colleague, the great Andrew Klavan, writes in City Journal:

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.

When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?

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As a frequent and vocal critic of Ezra Klein for reasons I won’t revive now, it pains me to note that he is practically the lone voice of reason in the series of JournoList installments from the Daily Caller. The focus this time is a discussion of message coordination for team Obama, i.e. should the JournoList come right out and overtly collude on media strategy to help him win?After the idea is floated by Luke Mitchell of Harpers, Klein comes in and slaps it down:

Nope, no message coordination. I’m not even sure that would be legal. This is a discussion list, though, and I want it to retain that character…

It’s almost enough to make me wonder if Klein’s problem isn’t dishonesty but self-deception. Perhaps his motives for this monstrosity really were academic. Perhaps, at some deep level he is reticent to now express, he too is disappointed at what it actually became. There must have been a moment when it first began that truly was inspiring and hopeful…

IT”S ALIVE! (more…)