The JournoList scandal that has been bubbling since June is poised to explode. It calls into question the future of journalism which once was about speaking truth to power. Today Jonathon Strong at the Daily Caller reports how journalists from Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic worked to protect then Presidential candidate Barack Obama by burying the story about his 20-year pastor and mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary diatribes and dubious alliances that were threatening to derail his candidacy. Play the race card, “call them racists” was one of the journalist’s, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent, alleged ideas to deflect attention away from Obama’s pastor. This is according to emails The Daily Caller obtained from the JournoList — an off-the-record listserv for “several hundred independent to left-leaning commentators and journalists.”

Recall it was back in June when Washington Post blogger David Weigel, who was assigned to cover “Conservatives,” resigned after private emails exchanges from JournoList, founded by the Washington Post’s Erza Klein in 2007, revealed his loathing and bias against the Right.

Watch President Obama’s pastor and mentor Jeremiah Wright and some of his anti-American, anti-White Diatribes

From The Daily Caller:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Read it all here.

Update: Next installment from The Daily Caller: Liberal journalists suggest government shut down Fox News

More: Obama wins! And Journolisters rejoice

Reaction from Washington Post: You shall know them by their work
Politico: POLITICO on Journolist

While the full membership of Journolist has not been disclosed. Below is a partial list. Here’s the source.

1. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
2. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
3. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
4. David Dayen – FireDogLake
5. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect
6. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker
7. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America
8. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University
9. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect
10. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic
11. Mike Allen – POLITICO
12. Ben Smith – POLITICO
13. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO
14. Joe Klein – TIME
15. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley
16. Chris Hayes – The Nation
17. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress
18. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic
19. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
20. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation
21. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic
22. Katha Pollitt – The Nation
23. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
24. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future
25. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network
26. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist
27. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com
28. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic
29. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian
30. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win
31. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect
32. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast
33. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic
34. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project
35. David Roberts – Grist
36. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine
37. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law
38. Moira Whelan – National Security Network
39. Henry Farrell – George Washington University
40. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly
41. Alec McGillis – Washington Post
42. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation
43. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium
44. Steven Teles – Yale University
45. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago
46. Adam Serwer – American Prospect
47. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg
48. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com
49. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News
50. Michael Scherer – TIME
51. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones
52. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net
53. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek
54. Daniel Davies – The Guardian
55. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA
56. Richard Kim – The Nation
57. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun
58. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute
59. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review
60. Joe Conason – The New York Observer
61. David Greenberg – Slate
62. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University
63. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect
64. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly
65. Sarah Spitz – NPR
66. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones
67. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation
68. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO
69. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO
70. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch
71. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones
72. Ryan Avent – Economist
72. Greg Sargent – Washington Post
73. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller
74. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice
75. David Corn – Mother Jones

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