It's been a while since I've been called nasty names in public or accused of ill-defined but dangerous conspiracies which is a shame because it can be so much fun! Once, for example, the conservative crackpot David Horowitz (whom I've never met) told the Boston Globe I was a "hard core Marxist propagandist." Then there was the time South Africa's apartheid-era Defense Minister, Magnus Malan, denounced our weekly public television series South Africa Now as a Communist plot hatched in Mozambique"
That's why it was so thrilling to learn I'd just joined Shirley Sherrod as an actor albeit in an exceedingly minor role, alas -- in another gussied-up, phony "journalism" beatdown by the conservative crackpot Andrew Breitbart. The news came in the form of an email "heads up" from Tracy Van Slyke, Project Director of The Media Consortium, a professional network of progressive media outlets of which my company Globalvision is a "card-carrying," dues-paying member. Turns out that a hit job about The Consortium had been posted on one of Breitbart's web sites, comically called Big Journalism.
The flimsy and inaccurate piece (hyperbolically headlined "JournoList, Shame of a Nation: The People Make the Party") demanded to know:
"Has a
shadowy gang of left-wing journalists and intellectuals been plotting to
manipulate the news cycle?"
It also tried to smear the Consortium, its directors and its members as some sort of coordinating arm for JournoList, the now-defunct, mostly liberal journalism Listserv that has become a right wing bete noir of late.
To no one's surprise, there is some overlap between Consortium members and those on the JournoList. (Full Disclosure: I was never "Listed.")
News of the dual memberships a meaningless factoid -- was reported rather breathlessly on the Breitbart site:
"The list of those identified as former members of the group is now up to more than 150 names, out of 400 in all. Nearly a quarter of those individuals were connected with another media organization called the Media Consortium."
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