Lately there has been some talk about JournoList, "an off-the-record online meeting space," for "several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics," in the words of Politico reporter Michael Calderone.  Some reporters have admitted the existence of the e-mail group, but feel it would be "inappropriate" to say more.  Ooh, inappropriate!

Bothering to note the fact that these same talking heads would scream bloody murder at the 'collusion of the media-industrial complex' in a 'virtual smoky back room' if the people involved were anything other than leftists would be a tired cliché before the words were even typed.  Of course it's different for the good progressives to do something than for the evil conservatives.

So what?  The complete lack of self-examination in news outlets should not be news by now; biased reporting and sanitized editorials mark every newspaper but the Wall Street Journal and the late New York Post.  That most television reporters voted for 'The One,' Barack Obama, should be obvious and pathetic.  He didn't even have to charm them; they were waiting to be "tingled," as MSNBC's Chris Matthews might put it.  Does the fact that these people e-mail each other and their trusted sources change anything?  No.

Neither does the fact that it's "secret" change anything.  What happens on the list does not stay on the list; they become the featured talking points of the next news cycle.  Secrecy is great for drama but not really necessary for political action.  As an example, look at the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate: an evil corporation secretly brainwashes a presidential candidate for their own nefarious purposes.  Now look at AIG and its special treatment - and the fact that it donated $100k to the New York Democratic Party just before the bailout.  Chris Dodd and Barack Obama don't have to be secretive about their support for their friends at Countrywide; nobody expects them to be other than honest politicians who stay bought once they're bought.  Experts agree: everything's fine.

One final nefarious plot, though.  Until about 15-20 years ago, most Americans pronounced the capital of Russia as "ma's cow."  This seems reasonable, since we spell it Moscow.  The Russians spell it Mockbá, which transliterates as "Moskva."  The Canadian anchor Peter Jennings, however, pronounced it as "MossCo," like some subsidiary of Petco or Costco.  Jennings' pronunciation had no more to do with the Russian than the American, but now nobody uses any other.  This pronunciation spread from ABC to the other networks and to everyday speech simply on the assumption that it was more correct.  Nobody bothered to pick up an encyclopedia.  Nobody called a contact in the State Department.  Uninformed, desperate trendiness was all that was needed for the media to expose the secret that they have an Orwellian "groupthink" consisting of uninformed, desperate trendiness.

Honestly, can the people on JournoList even organize a surprise party?  Oh, wait, discussion of that would be "inappropriate."  Ooh, the horrible secrecy of it!