Jay Cost explains the real loss to the media in the JournoList scandal. The media will now be viewed, as it ought to be; as expressing partisan views, and not some objective reality. He thinks that's not a bad thing. Neither do I.

Somehow, Ezra Klein has managed to drain a little more water out of the already shallow pool of media objectivity. He's introduced the notion that, in some instances, it may not have been a soft bias, but instead a hard one. That's exactly the kind of suspicion and mutual distrust that a party caucus breeds. And, unless the full JournoList is opened to the public, nobody will ever know for sure.

JournoList looks to me to be yet another mile-marker on this country's return to a partisan press. This does not upset me very much at all. I think American democracy is unthinkable without the political parties, so I do not think that a partisan press is all that bad. And it might finally stop journalists and academics from acquiring the inherently political authority that comes with monikers like "objective news" or "social science" when they are in fact promoting subjective values. That would be a good thing. All in all, a partisan press is, weirdly enough, a very honest one in that you know fully where everybody is coming from, and nobody can claim for him- or herself the epistemologically ridiculous "God's eye view."

Clarice Feldman