The Death of JournoList: Does Privacy End at the Edge of Your Thoughts?

"Every time someone like Weigel is humiliated because of quickly typed off-the-cuff comments," perhaps it will encourage "journalists" not to quickly type off-the-cuff comments that reveal them as intemperate partisan hacks. (If these published comments by Weigel are merely "the most intemperate comments," I wonder what the less intemperate comments would reveal. And I await the elaboration of the "context" from which these "most intemperate comments" have been "ripped out of".) This incident merely highlighted that Weigel, assigned by the WaPo to blog the "conservative beat," was hostile to the people he was covering. This was never really a big secret, except perhaps(?) to the WaPo, but now that he's been fully exposed, his ability to pose as an objective reporter on things conservative is kaput, and it's hardly unreasonable for the WaPo to let him go, because he it's unlikely that many conservatives will speak candidly to him at this point. As for the idea that "Honorable people do not read each other people's e-mails without permission[,]" I can only commend Mr. Shapiro for his reference to the quote from Henry Stimson that is usually cited as an example of oblivious gentlemanly innocence. That said, I don't recall many left-leaning journalists thunderously denouncing the ungentlemanly fellow who hacked into Sarah Palin's e-mail, as ajrmanns points out. And I'm also not aware that it has been demonstrated that the person who disclosed Weigel's intemperate messages was not an authorized recipient of said messages, or what his or her motive was for disclosing them. I vaguely recall an incident from 1984 or so where the Reverend Jesse Jackson, in a private meeting with supposedly friendly journalists, referred to New York as "Hymietown." Was the reporter who broke that story wrong to do so?

"And remember: All postings are off-the-record."

As we have learned with the Rolling Stone reporting on General McCrystal, there is no such thing as "off-the-record" anymore. "Off the record" has not been off the record since perhaps shortly after the Watergate scandal, when the fourth estate learned of the power it held.

It is unfortunate, because we need places that are off the record. I suspect, however, in the cut-throat competition between papers and reporters and news outlets, the all-mighty dollar has made the scoop far more valuable than preserving our private spaces, and even that private conversation between close friends over brandy can no longer be "off the record" when it is so easy to post to Twitter or Facebook the substance of that conversation.

Quoth the Instapundit:

"And if these had been emails among conservative pundits and reporters (er, *if* you could find 400 of those), the leaker would be treated as a *hero*, not a person 'whose motivations were mysterious and whose lack of integrity was obvious.'"

Mr. Shapiro, THIS is why so many people hold your "profession" in such contempt, as well they ought to. And this is why the WaPo, the NYT, and the other propaganda organs of the Democratic Party are circling the drain, as well they should.


We in "flyover country" aren't as stupid as the bi-coastal elites think we are, and our memories are long. It will be a cold day in Hades before I buy a newspaper again-- the Internet has freed us from the monopoly of print, a monopoly your colleagues have so badly abused.

Remember Earl Butz? Jimmy the Greek? Is Mr. Shapiro's outrage confined to those instances where leftists are taken down when their outrageous statements are publicized?

David Weigel "resigned" from the Post for all the right reasons. As any student of DC journalism is aware, the Post hired him to write website content about "conservative" bloggers. (Did the Post hire someone to write about "liberal" bloggers? No? Really? But, I digress.) The Post's effort to maintain the absurd fiction that they're actually an objective newspaper with no political axe to grind was not in any way harmed by the whistle-blower who merely revealed the fact that Weigel is, himself, an extreme leftist idealogue. But let's differentiate between "truth" and "fact" here. The truth is open to interpretation and, as a philosophical concept, exists only in the minds of human beings. The FACT of the matter is simple: Weigel was hired to do a job, and to do so with at least a modicum of objectivity. The further fact is that he revealed himself as being not only unable to do the job under the conditions he accepted, but gleefully unwilling to do anything but bash conservatives and to use his position on the Post's website as his fulcrum. Whistle-blowing is whistle-blowing; the left now bemoans the so-called "off-the-record" caveat as being inviolable when their ox is gored. Can we expect that same high dudgeon from Weigel's ideological fellow travelers the next time a secret BP gulf oil spill memo is leaked?

Im sorry but the emails released show that in fact the list was used to try to try to shape the news for the benefit of leftist causes. Further it showed that the alledgedly libertarian Weigel was actually left of center (else he wouldnt have been on the list)and apparently obscuring this fact to his employers and readers. I wish our elite journalists would stop acting like spoiled children and accepted that they sought out these positions of great power, and that they do, as Uncle Ben would have it, come with great responsability. It is in fact a sign of health in our democracy that Weigel and JournoList are being held accountable by the people.

In as much as the far left has been quite open about having to have members infiltrate conservative groups and rot them from within, or to have them 'join' a tea party and try to create incidents, this is really quite fair. The left as a group has little respect for privacy unless it directly infringes upon them - no one really came out hard on the kid who hacked Sarah Palin's mail. So to me this is just a bunch of crocodile tears.

Personal comments or not, Weigel was an inappropriate choice for his position.

Using the Post's logic, I'm sure there are plenty of athiests ready to report on the Vatican and lots of neo-Nazis eager to write about Jewish issues.

Privacy was breached, but there's a lot of blame going around and most of it falls on the practices of the Old Media, not the new...

There is and never has been any such thing as privacy when you are speaking to others. Anything that you say may be repeated and attributed to you as any adult should know. So... pick your words wisely and don't whine when someone repeats them and hey, just a thought.... don't be a smug wiseacre if you don't want to be treated like one.

Live by the sword die by the sword. He only got what he gave. Write from the middle and keep personal opions to yourself.