I just got done exchanging emails with Tucker Carlson, the editor in chief of the Daily Caller, and he confirms to me that the publication will not start publishing the full emails of Journolist members. This would have allowed readers to evaluate the full context and significance of these emails for themselves. Liberal bloggers who have seen snippets of their emails published by the Daily Caller had challenged Carlson to publish full email chains rather than cherry-picked fragments out of context. But the Daily Caller isn't going to, and Carlson tells me he will explain why in an online posting tonight.
In case you haven't been following this flap, the Daily Caller has done a series of stories that purport to catch J-List members in all manner of consipracy. There's one alleging that J-List members coordinated the best line of attack on Sarah Palin; another alleging they plotted to close down Fox News; and so on.
But as Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein and others have been pointing out, these stories are highly misleading and based on very selective publication of J-List emails. And indeed, it's really hard to grasp the justification for not publishing fuller chains, particularly since the Daily Caller apparently views these emails as so newsworthy. Perhaps publishing them would make it tougher to paint J-Listers as a secretive and omnipotent political cabal, rather than just a bunch of geeks and eggheads venting and arguing about politics.
At risk of getting drawn into this debate, I was a member of J-List for some time, but never when I was writing for The Post. I'd originally signed up as a member when I was at TPM, and remained one after The Washington Post Company hired me to write for WhoRunsGov. But I almost never participated -- I was a lurker -- and I removed myself from the list well before my blog was moved over to The Post proper, mainly because I was sick of being overwhelmed by emails.
The only thing I have to say about the J-List debate is this: The descriptions of it by Ezra, Matt and Jonathan Chait are 100 percent accurate, and anyone who says otherwise is daft. Period.
I frequently hear Republicans privately complaining to me that the reporting infrastructure on the right is woefully behind the one that's developed on the left. Republicans complain that conservative media are too quick to chase crazy consipracy theories and often seem intent on marginalizing itself.
The obsession with J-List is a case in point. And it's hard to see how the credibility of the developing conservative reporting infrastructure will be enhanced by the decision to continue publishing only cherry-picked snippets of emails, denying readers the opportunity to decide for themselves how important or significant they are.
