The Daily Caller asserts that “members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down,” but the only quote that rises close to that suggestion is Guardian (UK) columnist Daniel Davies saying “In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Time’s Michael Scherer says “I agree,” but it’s not clear with what. UCLA law prof Jonathan Zasloff, the DC claims, “suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air,” but his initial quote actually suggest the opposite–”Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”–and his smoking-gun quote (“I’ll take that risk”) is untethered from any shutting-down-Fox context. From all I can tell in the last three paragraphs, Zasloff, Scherer, and The New Republic’s John Judis are talking not about closing Fox News, but whether or not the White House should tactically choose which news organizations are allowed in its press briefings…
Right-of-center investigative journalism is going to have to tie up its loose ends a helluva lot tighter than this (and that) if it aims to persuade anyone from outside its camp. The real spade-work on the JournoList trove is not just fishing for a single chunk of Drudge-bait, but tying an off-the-record listserv conversation with a coordinated flurry of on-the-record commentary. Locker-room trash-talk can be fun to spy in on (in a train-wreck kind of way), but if there’s a real opinion-journalism scandal underneath any of this it will lie in attempts, concscious or unconscious, to foist political message discipline on disparate and unsuspecting audiences. This ain’t that.
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