Sarah Palin and other conservatives are pointing to a "BOMBSHELL!" story in the Daily Caller as evidence of media bias in the "lamestream media."The story centers on a former listserv called JournoList. It documents how the members of the listserv - many of them journalists - complained about ABC News' treatment of then-candidate Barack Obama in a 2008 debate.
In the ostensibly-private forum, JournoList members complained about the questions ABC News anchors asked during the debate about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal, the story reveals. One urged other members of the list to call Mr. Obama's conservative critics racist to deflect attention from the scandal, while another pushed for collaboration on an open letter complaining about the questioning. Later, a member of the group called for journalists to ignore the Wright controversy.
In a Facebook posting today, Palin called the story an "eye-opener," adding that "It's encouraging for commonsense conservatives who are frustrated with media cover-ups and biases to see truth revealed."
Palin, along with many of those seizing on the story as evidence of media bias, appears to be either unaware or ignoring the fact that the journalists mentioned in the piece are all openly liberal writers and commentators, not reporters striving for objectivity.
Among them are opinionated blogger Spencer Ackerman, longtime liberal writer and editor Michael Tomasky, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones and Chris Hayes of the Nation.
Conservatives have attacked JournoList - which the Daily Caller itself describes as "a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists" - as evidence of liberal bias among the mainstream media. It was founded by liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein in 2007, in an effort to create "an insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another."
Eventually, private emails from another Washington Post blogger named David Weigel were leaked to the Daily Caller showing but who blogged about the conservative movement, criticizing prominent conservatives. He soon resigned from the Post, and Klein shuttered JournoList.
Late last month, conservative commentator and editor Andrew Breitbart - the man behind the video that resulted in the forced resignation of Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod - offered $100,000 for the full JournoList archive. He said publishing "the Holy Grail of media bias" would "offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex."
