Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
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.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)
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.
The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”
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It is true to call the media “mainstream’ is totally incorrect. If “mainstream” is defined by the ‘market share’ a media outlet obtains in ratings, then ironically, FOX News is the new mainstream. FOX is not perfect. They do however, provide the message so that folks can take the info & make up their own minds. The misleading words, the omitted stories, the opinion camouflaged as hard news facts, shows us that ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NBC NPR, & a plethora of other media venues, are sending the same message, all the time. That their messages have been so similar, so in line w/ what the other says or portrays, is evidence the “old” mainstream media has been coordinating the message they’ve been delivering to the public. The “jour no-list” list-serve many are now talking about that was recently exposed, tells the story in indefensible terms. Many of the “old” media have actually been conspiring to deliver news according to their own political preferences & in doing so, falsely portraying their news stories as unbiased, hard news. Just dismissing the story about “jour no-list” does not make the facts go away. That the list even existed & that many on it discussed how to silence certain stories while promoting other stories that made their political candidates look good, reveals to the public an orchestrated attempt by many members of the media to deliberately sway the political discussion in America, while they were acting as actual political activists & advocates of specific politicians & the preferred political party of those activist journalists.
Deliberate distortions, lies, omissions, obfuscations, etc. represent the most despicable thing we have seen in our history. Thomas Paine was openly a revolutionary. Many other media types over the years, picked a side & openly advocated for it. This was their right. But today’s so called journalists have tried to hide their actions & they have tried to put down anyone who exposed their despicable activities. These actions & words, represent propagandizing & all of its despicable tenets. These people acted to change the course of history by maliciously manipulating facts. And there was malice involved here. The attacks on Palin as incapable & inexperienced that so many naive members of the public bought into, after hearing that lie so often & loud, were as low as it gets. Whether you would or would not support Palin’s candidacy is not the point. She had been governor of a state. She had run the administrative apparatus of a state. She has experience as the Commissioner of the oil & gas commission in that state. She had extensive managerial experience & she has extensive administrative experience. She knew how to develop & run a budget. Obama was only ever a community organizer. Yet the public was sold the story that Obama ran his campaign so that made him more experienced than Palin. What bunk!
Sorry folks, but any effort to subsidize the media, whether its public media or private media, must be met with absolute opposition. The very idea we would be asked to help pay these idiots is reprehensible. I will not help pay for propaganda by leftists who support any politician who speaks out against America, denigrates her, ignores her centuries of helping others, & her stand for individual rights & freedom, does not deserve my financial help. They deserve my disgust!
The journo-list scandal exposes the despicable actions of America’s OLD traditional mainstream media that is being overcome by new forms of media delivery & their blatant bias’ & hateful rhetoric also exposes how malicious they have been & will be until they go broke because they failed to deliver news to America, but tried to act as governmental propagandists to support the installation of a socialist state.
Kodos to you! So very well said!