The Lefty Media Cabal

Andrew Breitbart, who runs Breitbart.com and the Big Hollywood/Big Government/Big Journalism media empire, was asked about the kerfuffle over Journolist and the revelations that came from it last week (from American Spectator):

"The story is not Dave Weigel. The story is Journolist," conservative Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart said Monday in a brief telephone interview, explaining why he published Weigel's account of the career trajectory that led Weigel from libertarian Reason magazine to the Washington Post and now to unemployment.

It was Weigel's sarcastic e-mails to Journolist, the supposedly off-the-record e-mail group run by Ezra Klein, that resulted in his forced resignation Friday from the Post.

Breitbart said Journolist functioned as a "cabal" through which liberal reporters and editors colluded to counteract the influence of alternative media voices like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh.

Especially after the 2004 election, Breitbart said, liberals realized they had "lost control of the narrative," and began organizing projects aimed at preventing stories that hurt Democrats from gaining traction in mainstream media. Breitbart compared the Journolist "cabal" to Professor Peter Dreier's "Cry Wolf" project that offered $1,000 fees to academics for papers pushing back against conservative policy proposals.

By exerting peer pressure within the press corps, Breitbart said, the participants in Journalist influenced reporters like Weigel to adopt their practice of treating Drudge and Limbaugh as enemies, and to suppress story angles that favored conservatives.

"Anybody who thinks this story is just about David Weigel needs to turn in their credentials as a media critic," Breitbart said.

The lefty media thought they could keep messages secret on a list that had 400 members. However, somebody either had it in for Weigel or Journolist and released the damaging emails that caused the Washington Post to effectively fire their liberal in conservative clothing.

I guarantee you that a replacement for Journolist is already in development, but it will have far fewer members who will be much more discrete.