Sean Treglia Strikes Back, Strikes Out

This past March, when Ryan Sager of the New York Post broke the story of former Pew program officer Sean Treglia's remarkable and revealing talk before a room full of journalists in March, 2004, at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism, many bloggers immediately jumped on the story. And with good reason, since Mr. Treglia revealed not simply how Pew and seven other liberal foundations spent $123 million pursuing the "reform" agenda in national election campaigns, but why. You may watch the entire Treglia performance, which Ryan made available, by going here and following the links. A partial transcript of the tape is available here.

This story is back in the news thanks to Mr. Treglia himself, who has written a response to William Schambra's recent article, "In a World of Bloggers, Foundations can expect more Scrutiny," in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Mr. Treglia's article is titled, tellingly, "Philanthropy and Blogs can be a Dangerous Mix." Perhaps a more accurate title would have been, "Philanthropy and the First Amendment can be an Embarrassing Mix." If getting caught telling the truth can be awful, how much worse it must be to be raked over the coals anew for attempting to deny what you're caught on film saying plainly.

I've written about Sean Treglia many times before, perhaps most notably here and here, and I covered the Schambra article, too. In fact, as I noted at the time, I was honored to be noted by Mr. Schambra for my coverage of the Treglia story, which should itself be seen against the broader, and ongoing, attempt by the political class to use the FEC to crack down on political speech, including that of bloggers.

Mark Tapscott, who's followed the story closely from the start, called my attention to Mr. Treglia's piece, and he spends some time answering Mr. Treglia's charges. You'll want to read Mark's refutation, since it proves that thorough research and the truth trump rear-guard actions designed to distort every time.

Mr. Treglia's response to William Schambra is a curious piece of work. It seeks to discredit bloggers qua bloggers, asserting that their ilk (including this one) are not journalists, but mere partisan hacks; that we pursue not the truth, but a right-wing agenda; that we botched the Pew story top to bottom; and that all this bodes ill for the future if William Schambra is correct in his contention that bloggers have forever changed the nature of reporting on public foundations (and, one assumes, nonprofits such as Pew, which is no longer a foundation).

This attempt to cover his backsides, which area of his anatomy Mr. Treglia himself chose to expose, results in contortions that are as ineffective in achieving their desired end as they are painful to watch, or to imagine when transferred to anatomical metaphor. One almost concludes that these remarkable positions must result in -- or is it derive from? -- a flexibility or willingness to bend almost anything in order to achieve a desired end. Oh, to be a political cartoonist!

Let's dissect a few of Sean Treglia's charges against bloggers, and against William Schambra, and see what we discover. And let's start with one of his concluding paragraphs, which, I think, further enforces the perception that liberal foundations have enormous disdain for the unordained among us who, working without portfolio or license, pose a grave threat to the established order.

Some will continue to argue that the bloggers promoting the theories of conspiracy and cover-up are journalists. In my opinion they are not. They remind me of the lonely misanthropic men I see on the beach where I live each morning with metal detectors and headphones combing for hidden treasure buried just beneath the surface of the sand. Occasionally they raise their voice to interact with civilized society by shaking around a bag full of dented old cans and worthless rusted slugs claiming in some incoherent manner that they found treasure that no one else was crafty enough to locate. Of course, we all know the bag is filled with garbage. Just like the noise being made by some bloggers about my remarks.

Bloggers as beach-combing misanthropes? The bloggers I know are, in fact, gregarious creatures given to good fun and fellowship. Is Glenn Reynolds a surly loner? John Hinderaker a hater of men? Mark, Ryan, or I friendless collectors of junk? If anyone is sounding a sour note these days, its principal source isn't the blogosphere. And if you can't be happy living on the beach in Southern California, is there reason for hope?

Moreover, Mr. Treglia completely ignores the obvious fact that the story was broken by Ryan Sager writing in the New York Post, and not on his blog, Miscellaneous Objections. Several big media outlets picked up the Pew story, including the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Weekly Standard. A lengthy report ran on Fox News. Mr. Schambra lists all of these sources, yet Mr. Treglia chooses to write as if bloggers alone took him at his word when he spoke at USC.

Mr. Treglia also engages in hyperbole and obfuscation on a scale that few bloggers could get away with. He writes:

By way of background, it is helpful to summarize the accusations made on the blogs at issue, something Mr. Schambra refers to as mere rhetorical excesses:

In fact, Mr. Schambra does not refer to any rhetorical excesses of bloggers, but rather to those of philanthropies:

Bloggers should also do shoe-leather reporting and investigating. Hollow, exaggerated claims for a foundation program's success could quickly be deflated by behind-the-scenes reports on what is really happening on the ground.

Amen to that. Then comes Mr. Treglia's list of alleged false charges made against him by bloggers, helpfully listed in one succinct paragraph:

As an executive at the Pew Charitable Trusts, I led a hidden liberal conspiracy that duped Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court into passing and upholding the constitutionality of campaign-finance reform. The conspiracy consisted of a group of eight of the nation's largest and most prestigious foundations, included all of the mainstream media who were silent co-conspirators, and was accomplished through hidden foundation grants to phony groups and organizations. As the story goes, I then delivered a secret speech (that just happened to be taped and that was later uncovered by a blogger) in which I describe the details of the conspiracy.

"Hidden liberal conspiracy," the MSM as "silent co-conspirators," "phony groups," and "a secret speech." The Bilderbergers never had it so good, it seems. But here Mr. Treglia is engaging in his own conspiracy mongering. Drawing on Sean Treglia's own words, bloggers and conservative news outlets never resorted to such a primitive characterization of Pew's handiwork. Rather, as I wrote at the time, what Mr. Treglia revealed was the degree to which the political class has worked, through the reform lobby in Washington, myriad studies funded by liberal foundations, and the creation of what John Fund of the Wall Street Journal called an "Astroturf" campaign, to restrict the means by which political campaigns could be funded, all in the name of the public good.

These efforts have had as their goal, and as their effect, the diminution of the franchise as a means of controlling who gets elected to office, and how often. Again, as many others have noted, campaign finance reform serves, first and foremost, incumbent politicians of both parties, their permanent staffs on Capitol Hill, and elite media outlets that form strong bonds with them and share their generally liberal political philosophy.

Here's how William Schambra described this scenario:

Traditional journalists tend to take at face value the research on public policies generated by major foundations and nonprofit organizations. Mr. Treglia tried at the University of Southern California meeting to explain to an audience of journalists how this can prepare the ground for political change, but they still saw nothing newsworthy in what he said. Most reporters pass on study results unskeptically, seldom inquiring into possible deeper political agendas.

That is because modern journalism and modern philanthropy are ideological twins. Both are heirs of American progressivism, which championed the displacement of parochial, partisan wrangling in public life by the nonpartisanship, objectivity, and professionalism of public-policy experts.

[Pew President] Ms. Rimel captured this perfectly in her response to "Pewgate" in a letter she wrote to The Wall Street Journal: "In an era of personal attacks and polarization, the Trusts strive to provide objective information and to seek common-ground solutions to many of our country's most vexing problems." Its approach has worked. As Martin Morse Wooster observed in a column in the Journal, "on NPR and in David Broder columns," Pew and its grantees "are treated as benign truth-tellers, so high-minded as to be beyond politics."

This is the crux of the problem: the presentation as apolitical and necessarily true studies funded by parties who have a decidedly partisan interest in their outcome. Mr. Schambra notes that conservative foundations have never been accorded the degree of latitude their liberal brethren have enjoyed, as journalists regularly cite "the conservative Heritage Foundation" and the like, but rarely give studies funded by left-leaning outfits similar levels of scrutiny. Martin Morse Wooster is correct: the liberal media treat these sources of information, much of it complex and detailed in social science studies or long academic treatises, without casting a critical eye toward the source of the funding, the agenda of the donor, or the veracity of the results.

That isn't to argue, and I have not done so, that such studies are never accurate, or that they should be viewed as necessarily false. That is surely not the case. It is to insist, however, that no journalist, from the left or right, meekly accept at face value research that may reflect the political beliefs and worldview of the funder. And it's also to demand that the liberal establishment be treated with as much skepticism as the right already receives.

More than anything else, it's the fact that Mr. Treglia's story was noticed, first in a traditional newspaper, then in blogs, and then in traditional outlets again, that illustrates the changes occurring in the world in which liberal foundations operate. It's why Sean Treglia's year-old talk became a huge story and an embarrassment to his former employer. And it's why his apostasy from the liberal foundation world has gone neither unnoticed nor, I'm sure, unpunished.

Update: Ryan Sager has responded to Sean Treglia's letter, and he easily refutes some of the former's more outrageous claims. In particular, Mr. Treglia says that an unnamed reporter called him and admitted that, in effect, he had done virtually no research. Ryan denies that flat out, and I think the quality of his work stands as yet another refutation of charges against him.