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Conservative Web publisher Andrew Breitbart is offering $100,000 for the full archives of Journolist, a now-defunct listserv where liberal reporters shared their thoughts on current events.

Founder Ezra Klein of _The Washington Post_ shut down the list after someone leaked e-mails bashing conservative leaders sent by _Post_ blogger David Weigel, who then resigned. Is Breitbart

crossing an ethical line by offering to pay people to reveal private e-mails, or does Breitbart have every right to expose what he says is the media's liberal bias? (Listen to

Breitbart's offer.) BREITBART IS THROWING ETHICS OUT THE WINDOW: Andrew Breitbart is a disgrace, says Andrew Sullivan in _The Atlantic_. He's not trying to expose

"hypocrisy" or beat the Left in the war of ideas on how to fix "a world still perilously close to a second Great Depression." He's trying to grab power for himself

by ransacking the private lives of journalists to find red meat to throw to the "moronic hounds of today's right-wing base." "Politics as total war" SUBSCRIBE TO THE

WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE SIGN UP FOR THE WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning

news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of

The Week delivered directly to your inbox. THE PUBLIC HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT THE JOURNOLIST CABAL WAS UP TO: "If a group of professionals in any other industry were conspiring to

serve the interests of a political party," says James Taranto in _The Wall Street Journal_, "no journalist would deny that the public had a right to know." So why give

Journolisters a pass? If they were conspiring to sell liberal ideas, they're the ones who violated "professional ethics," not Breitbart. "Partisanship and the press"

BREITBART'S PREMISE IS NONSENSE: "If reporters and pundits were meeting on Journolist and forming progressive talking points to spread through the mainstream media," says

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters, why did they bend to the Bush administration and uniformly stop referring to waterboarding as torture, as they had been doing for years? A media out to

destroy Republicans wouldn't "morph into lapdogs" for a Republican president. Breitbart's excuse for his shocking offer is a lie. "Reality 1, Breitbart 0" A

free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com JOURNALISTS SHOULDN'T FEAR TRANSPARENCY, IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE: Whatever

reporters think of Andrew Breitbart, says Ann Althouse in her blog, surely they must agree that "transparency and freeing information" serves the "public good."

Regardless, "human nature being what it is," $100,000 and the promise of seeing some "prominent Journolisters" exposed should be enough to entice someone to give

Breitbart the archive. "Andrew Breitbart offers $100,000 for the full Journolist archive — with a promise to keep the source secret"