Don’t Blow Ideology Up My Jeans And Tell Me It’s Empiricism
Well, of course this exists.
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.
This goes a long way toward explaining the strange synchronicity of news stories and blog entries and activist involvement we’ve seen for the last couple few years. I don’t believe that synchronicity is purposeful, though. In fact, I believe that most of the members would be offended if one of their list-mates suggested that they do so. On the other hand, there is a definite and unavoidable echo-chamber effect when you associate mostly with those who share your ideology.
Now, Ezra Klein, who owns and runs the list says that no such thing is happening. He restricts the list to the left because if he were to allow a conservative viewpoint, the list would quickly “collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology”.
That’s simply nonsense on stilts. When you impose an ideological purity test, which is what Klein has done, you are specifically and deliberately excluding empiricism and demanding that ideology rule the day. If that’s his bag, well, it’s his list and he can do what he wants. However, he is being arrogant in the extreme if he expects us to believe that even the slightest drop of conservative dissent will cause his precious discussions to devolve to shouting. Either he’s being disingenuous, or he’s so insecure about the strength of his discussions that he knows they can’t withstand questioning.
I suspect that both are true. There’s no way any serious person can tell me that adding Ramesh Ponnuru or Victor David Hanson, both of whom are very low-key and supremely intelligent men to JournoList would cause it to become Usenet. There are plenty of other bloggers and writers on the right who are highly intelligent experts on many subjects whose presence would only make the discussion stronger and more interesting. That Klein dismisses them as potential flame-baiters only proves that he’s not interested in better discussions but safe ones where his precious worldview is never challenged. Indeed, if you read his post, the notion that JounoList is “safe” is a major selling point.
The real problem here for those of us in the rabble is that the journalists can not be fully participating members of the list and claim to be objective. There is no way that you can report objectively on any political matter when you immerse yourself in only one side of the political argument. Sure, someone like Jeffrey Toobin can dial up a conservative or a Republican for a quick quote, but he’s just going through the motions. There’s no way that he understands the other point of view. How can he when he’s reading so much from people who sharply disagree with it?
Even if he makes some attempt to understand the other side of the argument, we can’t reasonably believe that he’ll report it fairly considering that he has purposefully walled himself off from it for a good chunk of the day thanks to JournoList.
JounoList is fine if you’re a blogger or an activist. But if you’re a journalist, it’s mind poison.
Other Posts of Interest:
- I Think They Might Need to Review What the Word “Protect” Means
- No, Joe Klein, John McCain Isn’t A Liar and You Owe Him a Public Apology.
- I Think You’re Going to Need More than One Conservative There, Slate.
Category: Blogs and Blogging, Oh, THAT liberal media.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Deceit is transparency. And of course, ideology is empiricism. Libs! Feh.