The government-media cabal

Peter Orszag: Another Journolist Member With Government Ties? Klein Says Not

As it turns out, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag also was a participant in the online group.

Nothing wrong with talking to government officials — unless you're doing so with a secret agenda, selling partisan views as objective media coverage to an unsuspecting public.

Contrary to claims now being made, JournoList wasn't an innocent Web tool, a harmless forum for discussion. It was an organized effort by one party and its sympathizers in the liberal press to secretly influence public debate and policy.

Orszag's association with Klein's effort was noted seventeen months ago -- by head Journolister Ezra Klein himself at the American Prospect (HT Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom). Retrospective comic relief in the excerpt that follows is included at no extra charge.

But carefully note that in terms of the matter at hand, Klein does not definitively describe Orszag as a list participant, and most of the others Klein identifies as having "helped" are not on Clouthier's list as it currently exists (number tags correspond to the person's presence on Ms. Clouthier's list):

... The work of this site has always been to illuminate standard political reporting with expert policy commentary. In that, I've been helped by the many experts who have adopted the medium as their own: Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong (15), Paul Krugman (8), Matthew Holt, Peter Orszag, Andrew Gelman, Larry Bartels, Dani Rodrik, John Sides, among others. As a journalist, it's hard to always know who to call or which questions to ask. The joy of those blogs is that I don't have to guess what experts think is important: They simply explain what they think is important and I can use, or follow-up on, the information."