JournoList, the listserve discussion group of left-leaning journalists and academics founded by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, is back in the news.

Michael Calderone of Politico first reported on JournoList in March of 2009, writing:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. "Basically," he says, "it's just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely."

Although Calderone was the first to report on this, Mickey Kaus of Slate mentioned the existence of JournoList on his blog and in a bloggingheadstv.com in June of 2007:

Another party I'm not invited to. And you aren't either: Vlogging fogey lashes out at ur-whippersnapper Ezra Klein, upon learning that Klein has created a private Townhouse-like email group where liberal bloggers and editors hash out issues before they let the public in on the discussion

After Calderone's article, there was some gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, mostly by pundits and bloggers on the right, who seemed to have found evidence of liberal bias and left-wing collusion in the media. Many also simply observed what they believed to be hypocrisy by members of JournoList and the left in general. Among the more restrained, Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com wrote at the time:

Liberals used to accuse Fox News of being part of a right-wing conspiracy to float blog items into the news. It turns out that they have their own conduit for doing the same thing. Politico reports, apparently for the first time, on JournoList, a listserv comprising hundreds of news reporters, opinion journalists, and bloggers, that generates a significant amount of content...

I'm less interested in the secrecy than I am in the hypocrisy. For years, writers on the Right have heard the accusations from our counterparts that Fox News manipulates news by coordinating with bloggers, something that in my entire five-plus years of blogging I have never seen, and I think I'd have been in a position to see it. Now it seems like those accusations were more like projection.

Well, JournoList is back in the news today, thanks to DailyCaller.com. They are reporting that members of JournoList worked together to try to aid the Obama campaign in 2008 during the controversy regarding Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons, which many found objectionable.

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama's political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself....

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long - nearly a year since Wright's remarks became public - to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged....

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares - and call them racists."

While many are expressing angst over the fact that JournoList members apparently attempted to plan and coordinate messaging in support of their favored candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama, we at the Center for Competitive Politics are not among them.

The First Amendment, after all, does ensure freedom of the press, as well as the right to freely associate to advance common aims and interests. If the actions of JournoList don't fall under these protections, I don't know what does. Also worth noting is that all of the names I've seen identified as being members of JournoList are in fact on the opinion and commentary side of the media, who's perspectives are well known. I doubt too many people will express great surprise that Katha Pollit of the Nation thought the Reverend Wright issue was a distraction from more important issues.

But JournoList and the coordination of messaging that took place on Reverend Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 presidential campaign do raise several issues that are of interest to the Center, and relate to campaign finance regulation and protection for free and unfettered political speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

First, it is clear that the JournoList members was trying to aid the election of Barack Obama, and were using the resources of their corporate employers in order to do so. Fine by us at the Center, but where are the outraged members of the campaign finance "reform" community, normally hysterical at the thought of corporate resources being used for political purposes? What exactly is it that has the "reform" community hyperventilating at the thought of the Chamber of Commerce buying an ad in Time magazine that might be critical of President Obama, but leaves them yawning when it comes to Time featuring a column written with the explicit intent of aiding the Obama campaign?

Second, it would not surprise me at all if it were found that various members of JournoList were not only coordinating amongst themselves to support the Obama campaign, but were also coordinating with the Obama campaign. Probably not formal coordination, but I'm guessing that somewhere along the line more than a few of the JournoListers reached out the Obama campaign, or had the campaign reach out to them, to discuss how to best advance the campaign's message. Again, not a concern to us here at the Center, but will there be any outrage from the "reform" community about such coordination between candidate and corporate employees using corporate resources? I tend to doubt it.

Third, of course, is that the JournoList was a private discussion group, that the American public is only now getting a fleeting glimpse of. Again not an issue for the Center, who respects not just the right to speak and associate freely, but to do so in private if one wishes. But at a time when a significant portion of the political class as well as the professional campaign finance "reform" community are shrieking to the high heavens about the need for full and intrusive disclosure of independent groups, business corporations, and unions that engage in political speech, it seems curious that undisclosed coordination of political speech by corporate persons connected to JournoList has not drawn any attention from Democracy 21, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, or any of the usual suspects who are generally aghast at the thought of privacy for political speakers.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the entire JournoList story demonstrates just how dangerous are regulations, restrictions and prohibitions on political speech imposed on citizens who wish to spend or contribute money supporting candidates and causes.

This last point cannot be stressed enough. The entire JournoList episode has shown that members of the media can and have indeed attempted to influence and shape public opinion regarding political candidates and public policy, and have even coordinated these efforts. This is all good and well, but it means that it is vital that citizens who are not members of the media, who do not have the resources of a newspaper, radio or television station, or popular blog at their disposal, be able to get their message out by paying for, or associating with fellow citizens in a form that allows them to pool funds and pay for, political communications.

Without the right to spend money advocating a point of view, citizens would be left without meaningful opportunities for political speech when the media decides to side with one candidate or position over another, and the broader public would be denied the opportunity to hear voices and views that the media has chosen to ignore or marginalize.

The issue should not be whether a group of left-leaning journalists and pundits are sharing information and strategies in private and using the significant resources at their disposal to advance their particular agenda, but whether citizens outside of the media are able to do likewise on issues they care about. The Center for Competitive Politics is committed to ensuring that they do, while regrettably the campaign finance "reform" community is intent on establishing a multi-tiered system of speech privileges that give some, like the members of JournoList, the unfettered opportunity to speak out about politics, candidates, and policy, while most others are relegated to lower tiers that are either severely limited or outright prohibited from speaking.

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JournoList and the First Amendment