Journolist Plot To Bury Jeremiah Wright Story and Call Conservatives Racists
Written by invasive on July 20th, 2010 in Column2.
The Daily Caller has documents which show that left wing opinion journalists have plotted to bury stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Part of this plan includes calling conservatives “racists.”
In April, 2008, Charlie Gibson of ABC News asked Obama why it took him almost a year to dissociate himself from Wright’s fiery remarks. George Stephanopoulos asked Obama if he thought Wright loved America as much as he did.
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. Richard Kim of the site The Nation even called Stephanopoulos “a disgusting little rat snake.”
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.
Said Michael Tomasky, writer for the Guardian: “we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have.”
Said Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent:
If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Other journalists involved include Thomas Schaller (Baltimore Sun), Jonathan Stein (Mother Jones), Jared Bernstein, Holly Yeager, Joe Conason, David Greenberg (Slate), David Roberts (Grist), and Todd Gitlin (journalism professor).
