In an open letter to readers, Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson responds to criticism he’s received about the series of posts that his site is releasing exposing the participants in the liberal JournoList email discussion group:

The first [criticism] is that our pieces have proved only that liberal journalists have liberal views, and that’s hardly news. To be clear: We’re not contesting the right of anyone, journalist or not, to have political opinions. (I, for one, have made a pretty good living expressing mine.) What we object to is partisanship, which is by its nature dishonest, a species of intellectual corruption. Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too.

I would add to this that whether or not openly liberal writers like Joe Klein or staff members at the Nation or New Republic should be coordinating spin with campaign loyalists, there is no excuse for vituperative and partisan comments made by self-described “objective” reporters from the likes of at Bloomberg News, Politico, CNN, and NPR.

Carlson’s last point is worth noting as well:

One final note: Editing this series has been something of a depressing experience for me. I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It’s harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong.