Obama insiders at the Journolist gatherings

IBD:

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In short, they were fraudulently selling you political opinion and propaganda disguised as fair-minded "news."

The big questions: Did these journalists veer into outright advocacy? Did they collude with the White House before and after the election? Were they a de facto arm of the Democrats?

Sure looks that way. Among those taking part in JournoList was Jared Bernstein, an adviser to the Obama campaign in 2008 who today works as the top economic aide to Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2009, Bernstein appeared often as an unpaid "surrogate" for Obama on CNBC. He says his JournoList participation ended when he took a job with the White House in December 2008.

Well, did it? In February of this year, a group of liberal journalists and bloggers met with Bernstein at the White House. A number of them were JournoListers.

"The basic thrust of the event was to present a case for the efficacy of the Recovery Act as a part of the broader effort to convince the American people that the administration's efforts to restore the economy have been successful," wrote one of the participants, Jonathan Singer, of the meeting.

Got that? The White House was in effect enlisting the left-leaning "mainstream media" in its PR battle to sell Obamanomics to the American public. The media knew it and were willing tools.

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Except that Obamanomics has been such a colossal failure that even will collusion it is a tough sell. Still the larger point of the piece is right when it comes to the lack of journalistic ethics.