Daily Caller Reporter Was Member of JournoList
Although the Daily Caller has spent the past few days calling out the members of now disbanded listserv "JournoList" for their emails, both Sam Stein of the Huffington Post and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post point out that there was a Daily Caller reporter who was a member of the list.
Sam Stein:
What the Daily Caller never mentioned is that they were part of it too. At least for a short period of time.
Gautham Nagesh, a reporter now with The Hill, was an active participant in Journolist discussions while with his previous employer, the Daily Caller. I know because I was also a member of Journolist. Ezra Klein, the founder of the list, and Nagesh himself confirmed his participation.
The off-the-record nature of the emails prohibits reporting on what Nagesh said. But for the sake of transparency, much of it was casual political banter, policy discussion and even sports talk; the type of wonkish content for which Journolist became best known among its members. He did not offer the type of quips that the Daily Caller has since held up as controversial and unbecoming of reporters. But his presence on Journolist during that time period (he joined in March 2009, according to a review of the archives, and left the Caller in April 2010) pushes against the theory that it was a liberal cabal. Even Nagesh admits as much.
"I joined Journolist after [it was exposed in a Politico article] hoping to get an inside view of the left wing media conspiracy," he told the Huffington Post. "And unfortunately all I found was a wonkish listserv of like-minded people discussing topics that interested them. I found it extremely useful for putting me in contact with sources and exposing me to a side of the blogosphere I wasn't well connected with."
Why the Caller declined to mention Nagesh's presence on Journolist in its subsequent stories is unclear. Their chief reporter on the Journolist beat, Jonathan Strong, did not return an email or phone request for comment. But the site certainly knew about it. Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller's founder, tried unsuccessfully to join the list himself.
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Ezra Klein:
What even the Daily Caller's cherrypicked articles have shown is that Journolist was a long-running argument between people who had different views and different interests. In another wrinkle they haven't mentioned, Journolist included Gautham Nagesh, a Daily Caller reporter (he's since moved to The Hill). He frequently disagreed with other members of the list. It also included almost 400-some other people, including grad students, low-level editors, midwestern academics, and many others I'd never met or known of before they joined. If I had thought there was some deep and dark conspiracy to protect, I can guarantee you I would've been a bit more selective.
But there wasn't. Though the Daily Caller's headlines suggests the listserv of 400 spoke with one voice, their own reporting, and their own reporters, show that the reality was very different. It just doesn't fit their agenda to say so.
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