My name's Aubrey Whelan, and I'm a liberal.
Need more? I voted for our current president. I am embarrassingly obsessed with Hillary Clinton. I find Sarah Palin hilarious and frightening. I believe in gay marriage and universal healthcare and feminism and global warming.
A lot of people would have a problem with that paragraph. I know where they're coming from. The public tends to put journalists in a class of our own when it comes to expressing opinions -- and rightfully so. We decide what's news and what's not. We shape the public opinion. And because we have that privilege, that responsibility, we're obligated to be as unbiased as we possibly can. It makes sense.
But journalists are people, too, not neutral automatons, and we're bound to have a few biases. In fact, because any journalist worth their salt will immerse themselves in the issue they're covering, we're that much more likely to develop an opinion on it, just based on sheer proximity. But unless you have the distinct privilege of being an opinion columnist, you really shouldn't be taking to the rooftops to proclaim your love for [insert cause here].
So when conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and his ilk started foaming at the mouth a few weeks ago over a private online forum called JournoList, naturally my ears perked up.
Launched in 2007, JournoList was essentially a group of about 400 center-to-left-leaning journalists and academics who chatted about politics and the media on a regular basis. No one paid much attention to it until this June, when the Carlson-run website The Daily Caller leaked a JournoList e-mail from Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel. In it, Weigel wrote that archconservative blogger Matt Drudge should set himself on fire.
Weigel resigned within hours. The Internet exploded.
And the hits just keep coming with the Daily Caller leaking more and more posts. One was a discussion that took place during the Democratic primaries where participants debated what to do about the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's fiery former pastor.
"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 on us," wrote then-Washington Independent writer Spencer Ackerman. "Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
A post from a UCLA law professor wondered if the Federal Communications Commission could revoke FOX News' broadcasting license for espousing a political agenda. Other posts suggested that commentators painted Palin's vice presidential nod as sexist.
Carlson and company are, predictably, pointing to JournoList as evidence of a liberal conspiracy to take over the media.
It's true. A lot of the posts released so far are cringeworthy at best. And at worst, the JournoList participants look like shrewd political operatives plotting to get their candidate elected.
But what Carlson seems to forget is that nearly every journalist on the list is -- you guessed it -- an opinion writer. The cushy, left-leaning sentiments expressed on the list were barely different from the columns and blogs its authors wrote for the public.
And it's patently absurd for Carlson -- an unabashed conservative himself -- to bash a bunch of liberal opinion writers for toeing a party line. Take a look at FOX News, or even The Daily Caller. Isn't that what they do every day?
Everyone's a pundit these days, and that's the real problem exposed by the JournoList controversy. Were we to stumble upon a similar right-wing forum, there's no doubt the left would be writing gleeful pieces on a conservative media conspiracy.
Political reporting in this country has devolved into an echo chamber, a screaming match where pundits compete for blog hits and comments and links on the Huffington Post. We need commentary, fair and balanced or not; it's an essential part of a free press. But at the end of the day, one piece of refreshing, well-researched, unbiased news is worth more than a million JournoLists.
And as for the few journalists on the list who weren't openly liberal -- well, everyone's allowed to have an opinion. But if you call yourself an objective journalist, for the love of Woodward and Bernstein, don't write it down. It might sound unfair, but that's the sacrifice we make as reporters.
Journalism has taken enough of a beating this past decade. Let's not give people more reasons to dismiss it.
