Holy Fucking Fuck

ohhhhhhhh, boyohboyohboy. Fun.

Information Wants to Be Free. (Which is why you have corporate entities pay large sums for it to be distributed in private, off the record.)

I'm not going to comment much on my employer's salons except to say that I've been to them, and there's no scandal there.

This is true. No one had any respect left for The Atlantic, and anyone who's paid even the slightest attention to it lately knows well that David Bradley has completely perverted its original aim;

"In politics, The Atlantic Monthly will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea. It will deal frankly with persons and with parties, endeavoring always to keep in view that moral element which transcends all persons and parties, and which alone makes the basis of a true and lasting prosperity. It will not rank itself with any sect of anties: but with that body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private."

so no, no scandal, it's just pathetic.

At the paid ones, where the journalists talk, the journalists dictate what we say, and the sponsors are told they have no control. At the unpaid salons, it's--well, it's an off the record briefing, of the sort that every other journalist is well familiar with. Either way, I've never said or done anything that I wouldn't say at a regular interview, and neither have the other journalists.

That, Megan, is not the point. The point is that we now have concrete proof that your employment depends on pleasing "the masters of the universe", and that they are the people you are talking to and regurgitating the talking points of without attribution. This is how the money that pays your salary is generated, and you know it. And as anyone who has ever dealt with the masters of the universe knows, they don't pay people to disagree with them.

Off the record conversations allow journalists to get much deeper understanding of what's going on. That's why journalists talking to their friends about their jobs at companies of interest to the journalist talk off the record.

You aren't a journalist, Megan. Journalists source their claims, even if off the record. You just say that someone told you x, and we're supposed to believe you because you believed them. That's called being a fucking gossip, and that's when you're being diligent. Usually you just make outlandish claims without the slightest supporting evidence of any kind.

Now, there are journalists that get carried away with the excitement of an off-the-record conversation. Subjects can lie just as easily off the record as on it. But it's absurd to say that the only worthwhile conversations between journalists and the powerful are on the record. Off the record conversations allow politicians to say things that they cannot say publicly because the Fed Chairman or the Secretary of State or the Schools Chancellor cannot be seen to say certain things as they are trying to affect outcomes--they are, as the economists like to say, endogenous to the system. Restricting their ability to explain things off the record would restrict the supply of information available, not expand it.

So, according to Megan, top corporations are paying The Atlantic big bucks in order to give her information. In way, this is true, in that they are paying her to listen to and then restate their self-serving propaganda.
What a fucking idiot. This is less believable than her "defense" of not mentioning her now fiancee's various ties to the totally grassroots protests the Koch Foundation paid for and organized, and that little doozy, it is rumored, cost her the NYTimes gig that Douthat got. This won't get her fired, but maybe now the careerist pretend liberal actual centrists in her circle will slowly detach. As we'll see in shorters about to come, it seems she's not able to rely on them for a charitable interpretation and links anymore. That's progress, of a sort.