What you see when you connect the dots

Important post over at Hot Air:

Remembering Journolist And Progressive Media’s Bag Of Tricks

A couple weeks ago I came across an old article about Journolist which I found striking. In particular, I was struck by the ways in which some of the debates taking place among left-leaning journalists back in 2008 still seem to encompass the ways the left-wing media operates today.

As Sexton shows, the Journolist scandal was a temporary embarrassment for the MSM, but, in the end, Ezra Klein’s propaganda lab won and won big.

While Sexton writes “left-wing media”, he could just as easily have said “main stream media”. One of the key things about the Journolist scandal was that membership seems to enhance, rather than harm, career prospects. Outlets like the Daily Beast and the Washington Post happily hired Spencer Ackerman and Dave Weigel after they were exposed as propagandists.

Commenter Rob Crrgin nailed it at Hot Air:

It's also important to note that even when journolist was exposed, no members received any professional sanction, despite having disgraced their profession. The closest was Dave Weigel, because he was the most egregious abuses, who lost his position, but a few months later accepted one at an even bigger news outlet.

Three lessons for the Army of Davids:

1. Every scandal needs a Sussman

2. The MSM authority depends on the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect; the thumbnail reminder is a powerful weapon against it.

3. Twitter and other social media can easily turn an Army of Davids into “an Army of ADHD Kids” and a pack of squirrel -chasing canines.