A reader writes:
I don't see how you can be disgusted with Breitbart for what he did on one hand, while at the same time calling out people on the Journo-List because of some selectively edited emails posted on the Daily Caller. (Tucker Carlson has told Greg Sargent he won't publish the full emails.) You're not making sense here. I know you say this is about liberal group think, but you don't know what was discussed on the list. You're drawing conclusions based on nothing but some selectively edited emails published by someone whose agenda at the very least to boost traffic to his site.
I am not defending the Daily Caller, but you need little context to understand an email headlined "The Line On Palin" or Kilgore's call to arms. Tucker addresses the concern:
We reserve the right to change our minds about this in the future, but for now there’s an easy solution to this question: Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself. Every member of Journolist received new threads from the group every day, most of which are likely still sitting in Gmail accounts all over Washington and New York. So feel free to try to prove your allegations, or else stop making them.
In response, Ezra Klein publishes the emails from Tucker asking to join Journo-list two months ago:
At every turn, he's known about evidence that substantially complicates his picture of an international media conspiracy.
He knows I tried to let him in, odd behavior for someone with so much to hide and so much to lose. He knows I let one of his reporters remain a member. He knows I banned -- and enforced the ban -- on the sort of coordinated letter that served as example one of the list's conspiracy. He knows -- and never, to my knowledge, corrected -- that his reporter misrepresented the dates of Dave Weigel's posts to make it look like things he wrote at the Washington Independent were written at the Washington Post. And that's not even to mention the more prosaic deceptions of his selective choice of threads, truncated quotations, and misleading headlines.
Ezra also emails the Dish to counter a point in this post:
I'm not sure where you've gotten this idea. ["It was just a water-cooler list-serv that just happened to be open only to liberals whom Ezra Klein liked."] I didn't know most of the people on the list, and there were plenty of people I didn't like. I set two rules for members: Center to left, and not working for the government, I didn't exercise discretion beyond that because I didn't want to be in the position of selectively choosing people.