Daily Caller: "Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright"

Not that this is a real surprise for anyone paying a modicum of attention...

From The Daily Caller article by Jonathan Strong (h/t Clifton B at Another Black Conservative):

"It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign."

[...]

"Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. 'George [Stephanopoulos],' fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is 'being a disgusting little rat snake.'

"Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage."

[...]

"Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, 'why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?' Schaller proposed coordinating a 'smart statement expressing disgust' at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.
'It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,' Schaller wrote.

"Tomasky approved. 'YES. A thousand times yes,' he exclaimed.

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, 'I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.'

"Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be 'Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,' Bernstein wrote."

[...]

"'Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,' agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. 'But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.'
Ackerman went on:

"'I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.'

"'And I think this threads the needle. 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 upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.'

[...]

"Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.

"'Spencer, you’re wrong,' wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. 'Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.'"

So this our current fourth estate-- shilling for Obama, talking political strategy (which includes metaphorical assaults), doing their utmost to keep racists (I guess not counting people who would agree with Wright) out of the White House. Do we really want "facts" from these people informing our opinion?

Clifton B at Another Black Conservative had this astute reaction: "What is astounding is that none on the listsev objects to making up racism, they only object to whether or not the strategy will backfire on Obama. Given the racial tensions that already exist in this nation, I find it a particularly evil to add to that tension by making stuff up for political gain."

I highly recommend reading the entire article, and email links to The Daily Caller's article to anyone who doubts a Left-biased mainstream media.