Monday, July 05, 2010

Get The Story

Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel (I think I met him once, but I've met so many people from Reason) was brought down when nasty, anti-conservative emails he posted on Journolist came to light. He's landed on his feet, getting a spot at MSNBC, by the way.

Journolist, if you haven't been following this story, was a private online bulletin board started a few years ago by journalist Ezra Klein. It had about 400 or so generally leftist journalists shooting the breeze until Klein, after the scandal, decided to shut it down. (At least in name. It wouldn't be hard to start it up again elsewhere.)

Certainly like-minded people should be allowed to get together, online or otherwise, and bat about matters of common interest. Indeed, that's one of the glories of the internet. Still, as far as I understand, Journolist had a lot of officially neutral writers getting together secretly to discuss the meaning of the news. One would think this could lead, consciously or otherwise, to biased coverage and politicized narrative. At the very least, the participants should acknowledge the whole thing was sort of creepy.

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