Video: Journolist’s success in setting the message

A follow-up, of sorts, from yesterday’s post about Journolist, Joe Klein and Time Magazine, and Sarah Palin. The argument against the Journolist was that it represented an attempt by a few hundred activists to spin media coverage of events and conservative politicians. Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong reported that Klein had regurgitated the Journolist talking points into a Time Magazine blog post and passed them off as his own thoughts:

Time’s Joe Klein then linked to his own piece, parts of which he acknowledged came from strategy sessions on Journolist. “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community,” he wrote. And indeed Klein’s article contained arguments developed by his fellow Journolisters. Klein praised Palin personally, calling her “fresh” and “delightful,” but questioned her “militant” ideology. He noted Palin had endorsed parts of Obama’s energy proposal.

This piece came out when McCain named Palin as his running mate.  Keep that in mind when watching this clip from How Obama Got Elected, shown at the front end of an interview between Bill O’Reilly and John Ziegler, who pointed this Brian Williams report out to me.  The meat of the point comes right at the beginning:

Now, I seriously doubt that Brian Williams ever participated in Journolist, and it’s not exactly a shock to see a network news anchor use a Time Magazine article as the basis of analysis on a major story.  However, it does show that Klein successfully turned a Journolist strategy into media coverage on Palin, which makes his lack of honesty in sourcing those talking points even more of an issue.

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