On the team: The stunning hypocrisy of Journolist's critics

To the right, Fred Barnes and John Fund

They speak at GOP banquets. They meet to plot in Grover Norquist's office. Yet the wingers find a listserv shocking.

By Joe Conason
Salon.com

Nothing much can be learned from the manufactured media uproar over Journolist, except as a case study of how the right-wing propaganda machine still dominates America's daily narrative -- and how conservative journalists remain astonishingly exempt from the standards they are pretending to uphold.

Look no further than the outrage feigned by two of the nation's most prominent right-wing journalists, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard (and Fox News) and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, both of whom could barely contain their indignation over the revelation that a few hundred progressive writers and academics engaged in political discussion via e-mail. Having read a single Journolist e-mail that suggested tarring him as a "racist," Barnes suddenly detects a departure from "traditional standards":

When I'm talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.

(More here.)