Academic

?CALL THEM RACISTS:? JournoList Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah W?

By Glenn Reynolds

“CALL THEM RACISTS:” JournoList Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

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.? . . . Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, ?why don?t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?? Schaller proposed coordinating a ?smart statement expressing disgust? at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

?It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,? Schaller wrote.

Tomasky approved. ?YES. A thousand times yes,? he exclaimed. . . . Hayes urged his colleagues ? especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way ? to bury the Wright scandal. ?I?m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don?t think he?s worthy of defense, don?t defend him! What I?m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,? Hayes said.

Read the whole thing. Those who suspected that the media was collaborating to spin the coverage in Obama’s favor were righter than they knew. . . .

UPDATE: Andrew Breitbart: “Yes, But the Reporters at Pravda Weren?t Such Insufferable Assholes.” Plus this: “The only way that the media will recover from the horrifying discoveries found in the Journolist is to investigate and investigate until every guilty reporter, professor and institution is laid bare begging America for forgiveness. Will they do it?”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on July 20, 2010 (boomark / email).