So What's All This Fuss About JournoList?

So apparently there was this listserv called JournoList.  A bunch of liberal writers belonged to it, and would chat back and forth, help each other out with ideas, and whatnot.  Kind of a low tech, private FaceBook for the like-minded. Lots of prominent liberals belonged. And then one day, backlogs of this list were published (which is kind of sleazy, no matter how you slice it). Conservatives freaked out--and continue to do so--at this unprecedented, evil conspiracy.

Image from source, Salon

Um, okay.  Are they contending that there is no organized, brain-trusted equivalent on the right?  All of those right-wing talk shows come up with identical things to be outraged about day in and day out?  The right-wing memes that spread like a brush fire week in and week out are spontaneous?  I find that very hard to believe. Have you ever noticed that whatever the topic du jour is, you'll hear the same verbatim phrases coming out of the mouths of Sean Hannity and Lindsay Graham?  Well, maybe I was right.  One thing you can count on: if the right is getting all frothy about something, it's either totally made up, or they've done the very same thing.

[Excerpt]

On the team: The stunning hypocrisy of Journolist's critics

Nothing much can be learned from the manufactured media uproar over Journolist, except as a case study of how the right-wing propaganda machine still dominates America's daily narrative -- and how conservative journalists remain astonishingly exempt from the standards they are pretending to uphold.



Look no further than the outrage feigned by two of the nation's most prominent right-wing journalists, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard (and Fox News) and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, both of whom could barely contain their indignation over the revelation that a few hundred progressive writers and academics engaged in political discussion via e-mail. . .

Read more at: Salon