Evidence of an actual conspiracy to bias the news

For the last ten years, this page has displayed bit-by-bit evidence of political bias in the national news media, but now there appears to be more concrete evidence of a coordinated effort to inject leftist politics into journalism.  There's no way around it — they've been caught doing what many of us have suspected all along.



Establishment Media Shut Down Secret Chat Room Coordinating Facebook 'Whistleblower' Document Releases After Breitbart News Inquiries.  Several establishment media outlets coordinated the release of document disclosures in a giant and secret, now-defunct online chat group, hidden from the public, a series of recent reports reveals.  The group shut down abruptly on Tuesday afternoon [10/26/2021] after a series of unanswered inquiries from Breitbart News were sent to known members throughout the establishment media, including at least two New York Times reporters, a senior editor at the Atlantic, an NBC News reporter, and several others.  The online chat, through an application called Slack that facilitates group chats and is used by many different newsrooms and other companies nationwide, helped establishment media outlets coordinate the release of their stories on documents provided to them by so-called Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen.  Slack is generally used internally for easier communication in remote companies, but special features do allow Slack users to set up groups with members from a selection of different companies.  That appears to be what happened here, as representatives from each of the above named companies and others all joined a specially created Slack group to coordinate their stories for maximum impact.

How the Deep State Media Operate.  Few now doubt that the major U.S. media outlets, under the guise of journalism, function as political activists, saturating the airwaves and the internet with the talking points of the Democrat party.  There has long been liberal bias in the media, but deliberate efforts to undermine the traditional nonpartisan ideal of journalism took a giant leap forward with the 2007 founding of "Journolist."  It was originally intended to be a gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists to connect young writers to top sources, but Journolist quickly degenerated into the collusion and coordination for hackery and smears, as described by the Daily Caller: [...]

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#11] Journolist:  In June of 2010 the Daily Caller news website seized on the existence of a secret, private web message board open only to left-wing members of the news media, found its messages, and exposed them to the world.  The message board was revealed to be openly plotting to make sure that negative coverage of Barack Obama was either explained away or, better yet, ignored by the media.  This collusion showed that "the fix was in" and that liberal "journalists" saw no reason not to coordinate along ideological lines instead of simply reporting the truth.

The List: Every Journalist in the GameJournoPros Group Revealed.  Last week, Breitbart News revealed a secret video game journalist mailing list used by a clique of influential writers, editors, and bloggers, some of whom attempted to bully their colleagues with it in an attempt to shape the news agenda for political purposes.  We can today reveal the complete list of journalists, some 150 key industry figures, on the list.  Outlets with representation span the entire video games journalism universe and include Polygon, Ars Technica, Wired, Eurogamer, Destructoid, Kotaku, Joystiq, TechRadar, and many other well-known brands in games publishing.

1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered.  A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.  Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

JournoList 2.0 Discovered.  A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.  Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.  The group's existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#11]  Journolist:  In June of 2010 the Daily Caller news website seized on the existence of a secret, private web message board open only to left-wing members of the news media, found its messages, and exposed them to the world.  The message board was revealed to be openly plotting to make sure that negative coverage of Barack Obama was either explained away or, better yet, ignored by the media.  This collusion showed that "the fix was in" and that liberal "journalists" saw no reason not to coordinate along ideological lines instead of simply reporting the truth.

The Morphing Obama Biography and the Skeptics.  An odd taboo has been created on noticing that the president of the United States has a biography that can adapt itself to the needs of the moment.  Go too far in raising an alarm, and be labeled "birther" and shunned in polite society.  The credit for creating the "birther" label was claimed in 2008 by columnist David Weigel. [...] Weigel was also the most notorious "JournoLister."  In case you've forgotten about that left-wing media cabal, this Daily Caller article described the JournoList's coordinated efforts to bury the Jeremiah Wright story during the 2008 campaign.  (Although JournoList was disbanded in 2010, the mainstream media, in remarkable unison, have covered up the recent revelation that Wright was bribed $150,000 to keep quiet.)

Agenda Journalism:  Reporters and news writers not only assume that they understand a story before it unfolds, they approach events with a cookie-cutter mentality, a prefabricated plot line.  They come equipped with an entrenched political perspective that enables them to shape the news according to prior specification, a practice that has come to be known as "agenda journalism." ... Similarly, the controversy over the now-defunct Journolist group does not cloud the fact that a number of its members were clearly playing partisan politics, attacking Republicans and suppressing unsavory facts about Obama.

Journolist 2.0:
Occupy Wall Street Emails Show MSM Working With Protesters To Craft MessageBig Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement.  Someone has made the emails from the Occupy Wall Street email distro public and searchable.  The names in the list are a veritable who's who in media.

The Liberal Media Cult.  There's plenty of evidence for coordinated propaganda lies in the media.  We even have an apology from Roger Simon of Politico for the corrupt and massive coordination of media headlines using the JournOlist email list.  They say they've dropped JournOlist, but they are still at it every single day, probably through a secure website.  We know that the Washington Post, the NYT (all the news you're allowed to think), and the UK Guardian (an old Stalinist rag, as Malcolm Muggeridge revealed in his autobiography), are talking to each other all the time.

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.

Media Liberals on 'JournoList' Plotted to Bury the Jeremiah Wright Story in 2008.  The Daily Caller has another scoop on the leftist JournoList e-mails today, recalling when liberal scribes all wanted the Jeremiah Wright story to be dead and buried in the spring of 2008.  Jonathan Strong explained "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."

Steering the press.  For decades the right has used the term "media bias" as shorthand for the way journalists tend to slant to the left — but in recent years many on the left have taken up the term to account for what is, to them, the inexplicable durability of conservative ideas.  The latest revelation from the database of private e-mails circulated among the left-liberals of JournoList should end once and for all the preposterous fantasy that right-wing forces have great sway over the way the mainstream media do business.

Forget the Whistleblowers!  WaPo Management Owns the Journolist.  Andrew Brietbart is offering a $100,000 reward to a whistleblower who will release the entire Journolist archive.  Why bother?  Washington Post management has control of the archive, via creator Ezra Klein, who works for the Post.

Liberals on JournoList Would Watch Limbaugh Die.  Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller has more shocking e-mails from liberal journalists today.  He starts with an NPR producer who admits flaming hatred for Rush Limbaugh. ... So much for the idea that NPR is an oasis of civil discourse in a desert of vituperation.

Liberal Journalists Plotted to Protect Obama From Rev. Wright Scandal, Online Mag Says.  A group of liberal journalists in 2008 sought to sweep under the rug the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal that threatened to derail then-Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller, an online publication founded by Tucker Carlson, a conservative contributor for Fox News.

The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy.  Everyone knew most of the press corps was hoping for Obama in 2008.  Newly released emails show that hundreds of them were actively working to promote him.

Journolist and the Ackerman Question.  A few members of JournoList were not left-wing, but without the release of the full membership, the evidence points to a very heavy weighting towards the left with a few centrists thrown in.  JournoList's founder, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, freely admits it was intended to be a gathering place for lefty journalists and their like-minded allies in universities and think tanks.

The Smoking Gun For Media Bias.  For decades, moderates and conservatives have been derided and ridiculed for complaining about the mainstream media's pervasive liberal bias.  As it turns out, however, their worst fears were true.

Meet the New Journolist, Smaller Than the Old Journolist.  Blogosphere, please join me in celebrating the birth of Cabalist, the wittily-named successor to Ezra Klein's infamous Journolist, the listserv of liberal bloggers, pundits and academics that inadvertently brought down (very temporarily) the ex-Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel, and which is now the subject of an endless and embarrassing (for certain former Journolist participants) investigation by The Daily Caller, which has discovered e-mail chains suggesting that certain Journolist members were secretly devising partisan campaigns to advance Democratic Party interests.

JournoListers Conspired To Destroy Sarah Palin Day McCain Picked Her.  New e-mail messages published by the Daily Caller Thursday show a coordinated effort by the JournoList's members to destroy Sarah Palin the moment she was named John McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008.  Some even discussed how the former Alaska governor's decision to have a Down Syndrome baby rather than abort it could be used against her.

Obama's Poll Numbers Down, Imaginary Racism Up.  The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it's time to start calling conservatives "racist."  As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry "racism" whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama.

The Washington Post spins the story as best it can:
Getting the message on Journolist's controversial postings.  To conservatives, it is a pulling back of the curtain to expose the media's mendacity.  To liberals, it is a selective sliming based on e-mails that were supposed to remain private.  But there is no getting around the fact that some of these messages, culled from the members-only discussion group Journolist, are embarrassing.  They show liberal commentators appearing to cooperate in an effort to hammer out the shrewdest talking points against the Republicans — including, in one case, a suggestion for accusing random conservatives of being racist.

Journolist Equals Journalistic Corruption.  Don't make excuses for the Journolisters.  They subverted journalism and the pursuit of truth for politics and the pursuit of power.  John Tabin has entered the fray over Journolist, the now-defunct secret listserve of several hundred liberal journalists, activists and academics.  Tabin agrees that much of what the Daily Caller has reported about this cabal is extremely troubling and reprehensible.

Letter from Tucker Carlson on The Daily Caller's Journolist coverage.  We began our series on Journolist earlier this week with the expectation that our stories would be met with a fury of criticism from the Left.  A hurt dog barks, after all.  The response hasn't been all that furious, actually, probably because there isn't much for the exposed members of Journolist to say.  We caught them.  They're ashamed.  The wise ones are waiting for the tempest to pass.

JournoGate Continued:  Pouncing On Palin.  Ever wonder why 2008 VP candidate Sarah Palin was so ridiculed before much was known about her?  Turns out liberal journalists engaged in a coordinated smear campaign to aid the Democratic ticket.

No One Better Ever Deny Liberal Media Bias Again.  The revelation of these e-mails simply proves that we have been right all along.  The liberal media have no interest in being fair or unbiased.  In fact, they are deliberately violating any sense of journalistic ethics.  There is no excuse — none — for the attitudes and lack of professionalism these so-called journalists displayed not only in these e-mails but in their reporting.  Any member of the media that was privy to these Journolist emails, and remained silent, is just as much to blame as the folks that crafted these e-mails.  Their silence indicts them.

Obama wins! And Journolisters rejoice.  Ostensibly unbiased reporters weep for joy as Obama wins the 2008 election.

An Open Conspiracy To Slant the News.  The JournoList has started to leak like an over-ripe diaper.  Just in case you've been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here's the story. ... In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama.  They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds.  Journalists at such "objective" news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time, and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin.  Like an Amish community raising a barn, members of the progressive community got together to hammer out talking points.

JournoList:  A Disgrace to American Journalism.  One of the nastiest episodes in American journalism occurred in the immediate aftermath of John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate during the 2008 election.  It was a potential game-changer and, for a moment, it rocked the leftist media back on its heels.  Who can ever forget Andrea Mitchell's gaping-fish-out-of-water reaction to Palin's electrifying acceptance speech?  For one brief, horrible moment, the Marxist Media saw its dream of a People's Republic dying, shot through the heart by the moose-hunting mom from Nowhere, Alaska.

When JournoList Attacks.  So, thanks to the Daily Caller, more emails are emerging from "Journolist," that secret list of liberal media hacks — and guess what, they're about Sarah Palin.  And surprise:  they aren't positive!

'Journolist' Affair Worse Than Clinton Conspiracy.  Today's journalism scandal involving liberal media members of the invitation-only "Journolist" listserv discussing ways to help 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama or discredit his press critics is far more organized than the Clinton era "vast right-wing media conspiracy," according to former Clinton aides.

Your Daily Caller JournoList Document Drop Du Jour.  Back in the 1920s, the iconoclastic H.L. Mencken wrote that "It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics."  Flash-forward almost a century, and his would-be successors see it not as [a] permanent opposition, but an element of the "non-official campaign" of one's party's presidential candidate.

Just Another High-Minded Chat About Throwing People Through Windows.  The Daily Caller strikes again, finding more from JournoList... It's disturbing, and the fact that it doesn't bother more people is disturbing.

Journolist, Jeremiah Wright and Groucho Marx.  Forget the paucity of imagination and style, what about the group think?  These are the independent minds that seek to mold our culture and political lives?  Nowhere to be found is an original thought — unless you count accusing Karl Rove of racism as a brainstorm.

JournoLism's Bias.  The big questions:  Did these journalists veer into outright advocacy?  Did they collude with the White House before and after the election?  Were they a de facto arm of the Democrats?  Sure looks that way.  Among those taking part in JournoList was Jared Bernstein, an adviser to the Obama campaign in 2008 who today works as the top economic aide to Vice President Joe Biden. Journolist:  A peek inside the Ministry of Propaganda.  [Scroll down]  To the media elite, you and I are just morons.  That's why everything that happened to Sarah Palin in the 2008 campaign should be questioned.  That's why all "mainstream" reporting about Barack Obama's progressive agenda should be doubted.  That's why the campaign to smear Fox News should be seen for what it is — an effort to limit the information available to the public to what benefits the current administration.

JournoList members silent on slander.  JournoList began as a club, grew into an ongoing attempt to shape the news that then evolved into an informal political action committee, which changed again into the fourth estate's version of President Nixon's plumbers.  Like the plumbers, the JournoListas got caught.  Unlike what followed in the aftermath of exposure of Beltway wrongdoing in the '70s, however, the editors of the Post and the Times are not interested in the details or in assuring it doesn't happen again.

Journolist and Malice.  Uncertainty and fear among members of the now-defunct Journolist cabal seem rampant.  Some of the emails demonstrate certain liberal journalists willing and eager to employ malice as part and parcel of their professional duties.  The fact that such open malice of at least a few of the four hundred "professionals" on Journolist did not result in their expulsion from this professional Listserv, and indeed seemed tolerated at the time by its members and now by its defenders, would seem to indicate a more widespread problem.  The dog doesn't bark when it's comfortable with the visitor.

JournoList:  'Coordinated' Ideological Bankruptcy.  The next time you hear a liberal scoffing at the idea that the American left has a set of "talking points," or that they're "reading from the same script," tell him to google "JournoList."  Frankly, it is completely unsurprising that 400, invitation-only, members of leftist media, academia, think tanks and political activist associations would be attempting to coordinate their political strategy.  When your ideology is bankrupt, the only thing left is strength in numbers.

JournoLism.  Do journalists collude with one another on how to "spin" stories?  On developing "talking points," just like politicians?  On which red herrings can be purposely thrown in, to mislead and distract readers from the truth?  On how to hide hard but inconvenient facts?  On how to help their friends, hurt their enemies, and generally, stage-manage the presentation of the news to advance a common political agenda?

The Left Hates Conservatives.  Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives.  That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly.  But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death — and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.

More about hate crimes that aren't.

Twenty Questions about the Washington Post's Complicity in the 'JournoList'.  [#1]  How many Washington Post staffers were part of JournoList and, if there are any currently unnamed, who are they?  [#2]  Will the Post be transparent and either release or order its staffers to release their contributions to the list?  [#3]  Will the Post release the names and affiliations of all those on the list or have its staffers do so?  [#4]  Did the Post know about JournoList when Klein was hired and that it was a "center to left" group?  If yes, what does that say about the Post's claims of neutrality?

Journolist veers out of bounds.  Until recently, there was a semisecret, off-the-record organization called Journolist.  It was a listserv, which is a bunch of people who sign up (if allowed) and then get the same e-mails and can reply to everybody on the list.  Journolist was founded by Ezra Klein in early 2007, when he was 22 and working for the liberal publication The American Prospect.  Klein continued running it when he went to The Washington Post in 2009.  The Post is a mainstream publication, but Journolist was limited to those "from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left."

The Left and Its Talking Points.  The Journolist story demonstrates active, covert collaboration among leftists to plant political themes in the media.  Long-time listeners of conservative talk radio are aware of audio montages where old-line media talking heads repeat verbatim a set of words that can't be anything other than shared talking points.  A perfect example was the 2000-era Dick Cheney "gravitas" showcased by Rush Limbaugh.  It's one thing to ask how proper reporting of Obama might have changed the outcome of the election.  I'll ask a bigger question:  Did old-line media journalists share talking points to prop up the global warming issue?

JournoList and the Leftist Mentality.  In a way, the JournoList scandal is old news.  It's something long suspected on our side of the aisle, something we've occasionally seen brief glimpses of (as in the identical slogans and taglines that just happen to appear in stories, columns, and headlines with amazing synchronicity).  After the first debate of the 2000 election, I saw the line "Sometimes Al Gore is too hot, sometimes he's too cold, and sometimes he's just right" from six different sources in a single hour.  This, as Trotsky would have put it, was no accident, comrades.  Media leftists, and their co-conspirators in the academy and the think-tanks, manipulate and distort the news reaching the American public, and they always have.

Trash Drudge, Bash Rush and Get a Career Boost?  Although it has long been well-known that journalists overwhelmingly have liberal leanings, they have typically claimed that it doesn't affect their reporting.  But the boost given Weigel's career by the revelations that he advocated shaping news coverage to help President Obama pass his legislative agenda was extremely surprising.

Look who is back at the Washington Post.  Well, look who has a guest column in the Washington Post on Sunday — David Weigel.  And guess what it headline is — "Five myths about the 'tea party'." ... Hey, Washington Post, that's your credibility running down the drain; you might want to stop it.

JournoList update:  The known members of JournoList, a conspiracy to manipulate media coverage to favor leftist positions, now number 151.  Which means that about 2/3 of the list remain covert operatives, still functioning without public knowledge of their membership.

Liberalism's Sin.  Liberals are fully capable of functioning in their daily lives.  They are often highly successful.  They can be very pleasant and engaging people.  Obviously, the alleged insanity isn't incapacitating.  Nonetheless, elite liberals in particular are prone to behavior that appears insane.  A great example is the moral certitude saturating the JournoList files.  The blind and often vicious self-righteousness in the JournoList exchanges is light-years beyond the wildest liberal caricature of fundamentalist "bible-thumpers."

The 10 Biggest 'Non-Story' Stories of 2010.  In July, a group of some 400 liberal journalist and academics, led by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, was exposed by The Daily Caller as having collaborated to de-rail Sarah Palin and defuse the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign.  The group maintained a private e-mail server to share information and strategies, often collaborating with political operatives.  How novel; a media conspiracy ignored by the media.

List of 65 known members of the Journolist.

Related topics:
Jeremiah Wright
Media favoritism toward Barack Obama




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Updated October 27, 2021.

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