New evidence in Chait v. Yglesias

Jon Chait's TNR article on the "netroots" makes an important point: there is a new wave of liberal bloggers who are putting ideological/partisan loyalty ahead of the open-minded pursuit of the truth.

One device that Chait uses effectively is pointing out that even Matthew Yglesias, a famously open-minded liberal blogger, "confessed in March that he had soft-pedaled his opposition to gun control. 'I don't write about this issue much because, hey, I don't want to be a wanker,' he wrote. 'Wanker' is the netroots equivalent of the conservative term 'squish'--an expression of derision reserved usually, but not exclusively, for ideological defectors."

Yglesias objected to Chait's characterization of what he wrote:

Rather than "confessing" to a pattern of soft-pedaling my views on the issue, I was--in my mind at least -- bragging that, unlike many other professional journalists, I don't go out of my way to harp on points of disagreement with the liberal orthodoxy purely in order to bolster my credentials as an independent-minded blogger.

Chait then pointed to a different Yglesias post in which Yglesias was more explicit about his motivations:

A separate question is whether or not journalists think of themselves as political actors. Overwhelmingly, I think journalists would tell you "no, they shouldn't" and that most liberal (but not conservative) pundits would agree. To me, this is wrong. I could in perfectly good faith spend all my time looking for flawed arguments for conclusions I agree with, finding far-left people with unsound views to denounce them, and mocking the foibles of politicians whose views I agree with on the merits. A blog like that might even be entertaining and perhaps widely read. I wouldn't do a site like that, however, because I think it would be irresponsible. I'm not a political activist by trade, I'm a writer, but hopefully my writing has some kind of impact on the world and I'd like it be a good impact rather than a bad one and that's something I try to take seriously.

I want to add one more piece of evidence to the mix. Like Chait, I think Yglesias is about the best blogger out there, which is why I was similarly disappointed in this December 2006 post in which Yglesias admits he ignored the Sandy Berger controversy for ideological reasons:

With what I consider a great deal of justification, I tried to rigorously ignore the story of Sandy Berger poaching documents when it was first being pushed by conservatives who wanted to use it as a lever to continue grossly failed foreign and domestic policies. That said, it's a long way from Election Day and, seriously, a new Inspector General report says he "removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday." Hid them under a a trash collector!

One assumes this will make it difficult for Berger to obtain any high-level executive branch appointments in the future.

In short, Yglesias didn't write about the (troubling) Berger story because it was being pushed by conservatives with goals he opposes. He even half-jokingly cites the amount of time until Election Day as partial justification for bringing it up at all.

As Chait argues, if this is how Yglesias thinks, imagine what the rest of the "netroots" is like.

Comments

[SomeCallMeTim]

I think you are misreading Yglesias. On my reading, he's offering a more sophisticated answer that amounts to a melding of (a) "It's going to get enough attention anyway," and (b) "What matters is what the audience understands, not what I write, and, at this moment, work on Berger will only be co-opted by an existing and wrongheaded frame." Editors make decisions based on these sorts of determinations all of the time.

It's not clear to me that there exists some set of stories which must be written about; in fact, it seems clear to me that such is not true. Yet you seem to be implying that latter.

[Rob]

That the netroots set their own agenda is hardly surprising.

More troubling is when it happens at supposedly reputable news sources like the New York Times. Case in point: A week ago the Washington Post reported that the much-discussed SEC investigation of Bill Frist had cleared him of any wrongdoing. The Times certainly reported on the allegations against Frist when they were being made, but over the last eight days they haven't found enough space in the newspaper to mention his exoneration. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

[Joel]

Brendan, it's not a sin for Yglesias to avoid commenting on the Sandy Berger controversy or for liberal bloggers to refrain from denouncing Sean Penn for intemperate remarks. These issues are not important ones.

If Yglesias were to refrain from voicing his thoughts on Iraq (despite that being an important issue and a focus of his normally) because he didn't want to hurt the Democrats politically, that would be a problem.

See, e.g., Richard Perle: “Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=

[TallDave]

"there is a new wave of liberal bloggers who are putting ideological/partisan loyalty ahead of the open-minded pursuit of the truth."

New?

Hell, this stuff even didn't start with the Internet. It goes all the way back to Willi Munzenberg.

In the 1930s, most American leftists believed Stalin was creating a modern utopia, thanks to a flood of disinformatsiya. That propaganda system, whose claims should have sunk quickly under the weight of their own ridiculousness when exposed to rational inquiry, was buoyed by the deliberately-introduced concept of relative truth and morality, a philosophical system perfect for justifying any convenient anti-empirical belief. Thus we heard that SE Asians would be better off under Communism, that Soviets had "economic freedom" superior to our "political freedom," that "war" was the only real enemy, that the USA and USSR were moral equivalents.

That campaign didn't die with its creators; their dupes put down institutional roots in academia and media and continued defying reality even after the Soviets collapsed. And why not? The system was designed for precisely the purpose of denying reality.

And so today, 1/3 of Dems believe Bush either caused 9/11 or let it happen.