Political Commentary and Policy Wonks: Where Everyone Knows Your Name and Everyone “Sounds” the Same

UPDATE: March 20, 2009

Democratic scandal regarding the AIG ‘bonuses’ engineered by Dodds and Geithner is a distraction!

Citing 4 examples, Just One Minute dissects the latest lefty talking point:

“Don’t think of the JournoList as an echo chamber – think of it as a time saver!

Let me suggest one enhancement – why couldn’t they just designate one message as the JL Theme of the Day and post it at a dedicated blog. That would save us even more time since we wouldn’t be seeing the same message kicked around in non-echo chamberish fashion at multiple blogs. Of course, the downside is that we would miss the pleasure of seeing different artists present their cover version of the tune of the day. Tough call.”

The Daily Cliche

We have always found it fascinating how criticism of the Bush administration by the Mainstream Media seemed to revolve around uniform commentary, even utilizing the same words. This development became instantly noticeable with the introduction of a single word to media commentary masquerading as news: “gravitas”. Bush lacked “gravitas”. The allegation, when Bush ran for office in 1999, was startling for one reason: the idea that Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, and Peter Jennings would all have the same word on the tip of their collective tongues to lash the Bush campaign was just a bit much.

Of course since then we have seen a ridiculous amount of collective thinking on the part of the Left. The Daily Cliche should be the name of all Mainstream Media news departments. Whether describing Obama (“articulate”) or global warming (“consensus”), original thought or studied analysis plays no part in reporting. Often the exact same descriptive word will be used by dozens of news outlets. And watching Obama Press Secretary, Gibbs, field questions, makes ones skin crawl as he reaches for cliches and directs personal attacks on administration critics or policy skeptics in exactly the words you heard Mathews spit out on MSNBC just a few hours before.

As it turn out there is a reason for this group think. From The Politico:

“For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”

I guess it is no more a conspiracy than an anthill is. But consider this. If you were an editor, would you want your ‘reporter’ or ‘journalist’ involved in a process designed to create conformity of thought? No wonder newspapers are folding everywhere and the circulation of left leaning magazines have shrunk to nonprofitable figures. These ignoramuses, in preening themselves in front of each other to display their brilliance, have become an echo chamber of unoriginality.

“I’m very lazy about writing when I’m not getting paid,” Alterman said. “So if I take the trouble to write something in any detail on the list, I tend to cannibalize it. It doesn’t surprise me when I see things on the list on people’s blogs.”

Last April, criticism of ABC’s handling of a Democratic presidential debate took shape on JList before morphing into an open letter to the network, signed by more than 40 journalists and academics — many of whom are JList members.

But beyond these specific examples, it’s hard to trace JList’s influence in the media, because so few JListers are willing to talk on the record about it.

POLITICO contacted nearly three dozen current JList members for this story. The majority either declined to comment or didn’t respond to interview requests — and then returned to JList to post items on why they wouldn’t be talking to POLITICO about what goes on there.

In an e-mail, Klein said he understands that the JList’s off-the-record rule “makes it seems secretive.” But he insisted that JList discussions have to be off the record in order to “ensure that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions.”

One byproduct of that secrecy: For all its high-profile membership — which includes Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman; staffers from Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New Yorker, policy wonks, academics, and bloggers such as Klein and Matthew Yglesias — JList itself has received almost no attention from the media.”

OK. DBKP is going to make a wild allegation. Now i know you will think this a stretch. But here it is:

THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON A LOT LONGER THAN TWO YEARS.

By pat

Image – Farm4
Image – Einstein

Tags: commentary, JList, journalists, Politico, uniform