Chuck Todd: embarrassed by JournoList or not?

By Warner Todd Huston

Today two stories have recently appeared reporting NBC Political Director Chuck Todd's reaction to the revelations of the JournoList, that website were avowed left-wing journalists congregated to talk about their profession and plot to foster a left-wing agenda in their work in the media.

Todd was reported to have found the JournoList revelations to be "very depressing" and said that the story had "kept him up nights" because of the overt leftist bias evinced by the list member's emails released by Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller website.

"Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism."

But later that day another story claiming that Todd was taken out of context emerged that told a slightly different tale. In the afternoon fellow JouronLista Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post that Todd was more upset at the conservatives that were using the JournoList controversy to push their agenda and was much less upset that the story revealed a left-wing media conspiracy.

So, once again, it appears that the Old Media's leftist guard is spinning to try and make these revelations all the fault of the conservatives that merely made the list public knowledge. Like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and blaming his brother for telling him to get some cookies, JournoListas are doing everything they can to shift blame.

So, maybe Todd was misquoted by Politico in the earlier report and maybe he was more outraged by the right's treatment of this story than he was over his agenda spinning comrades of the JournoList. But is the Post's Sargent right when he praised Chuck Todd's latest position on the JournoList? "But it appears Todd has the balance right here...," Sargent said of Todd's second public reaction. Can we trust Chuck Todd's assessment as a long time member of the Old Media? Is this whole thing a mess blown out of proportion by conservatives?

Now, in the two Todd JournoList stories he is portrayed as one of those unbiased, center of the road, professional type of journalists, the kind we can trust, and the claim is made that this whole mess is unfairly muddying the waters for his sort of old time pro. As noted above, Todd is quoted as being upset that journalists like him were "mixed in with journalists with an agenda." He clearly wants to foster the image that he is unbiased.

But recently I did a top ten list of the most left-biased journalists working in America today and our friend Chuck Todd came in at number four on that list. (See the full list HERE)

First of all Todd was not always a journalist. He began his professional career by working for Democrat election campaigns, the last of which was Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin's 1992 failed run for the White House. Todd then went into journalism from there. So we know that he comes to journalism from a left-wing background in the first place. In my story from last week I have instance after instance of Chuck Todd's own left-wing biased reporting.

So, it is a bit precious of him to be claiming that he, as an unbiased professional journalist, has been unduly harmed by this JournoList story.

Chuck Todd is just another kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar... and it appears it's his left hand.

(Originally posted at BigJournalism.com)

© Warner Todd Huston