What happens when a Presidential campaign hires a blogger to reach out to other bloggers, particularly those writers who are sympathetic to the candidate?
In the past 48 hours we got one answer: a firestorm, with a vetting of the bloggers’ past comments by some folks not sympathetic to the candidate.
Is it “gotcha” — or can candidates now only be safe hiring a blogger who works on the C-SPAN blog?
The issue: Democrat John Edwards hiring of Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte Matter, and of Shakespear’s Sister’s Melissa McEwan. Both who are highly-respected among progressive bloggers and (yes) some others who don’t totally share their views (not everyone likes them because part of the blogworld is always angry or at war about something).
Some Other Comments On This Issue:
The All Spin Zone
The Queen Of All Evil (who offers a video by Michelle Malkin on this controversy)
Dean Esmay
Crooks and Liars posts the CNN video report on this flap.
OUR VIEW:
(1) This shows how far attack politics is going — and how it is going to go. Now any Republican who hires a blogger for anything had better research all of that writer’s comments on the Internet and posts. Ditto for anyone who hires a progressive or even independent blogger. This doesn’t just mean net outreach, but also clearly means an extra layer of investigation will have to be done to hire a blogger to work as press secretary or advisor.
(2) It’s the nature of blogging (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) for many blog writers to take positions that might be controversial in content, presentation, or language (each site makes a judgment on the latter and we avoid non-newspaper language here.) While some blog writers and commenters choose words carefully, more often than not blogging resembles a cyberspace form of talk radio with little censoring. And blogwriters can be far more blunt than newspaper columnists or editorial writers.
So if this is the new standard to be applied to campaigns on the left, it’s clear there is going to be a demand for the same standards to be applied to campaigns on the right.
The irony is that, from this writers’ standpoint, the fuss over a blogger and his/her past writings obscures one fact. If you write a weblog and get a press release or email from another blogger working for a campaign and promoting it, it does not influence what’s written — or even read. We routinely get emails from candidates and read some, don’t have time for others but we know what they are: campaign press releases presenting one side in the best possible light.
If so-and-so from X blog on the left or right sends us a press release or a request to link info favorable to a candidate, it won’t make a bigger difference than if Harvey Schmidlap who isn’t a blogger will send one for his candidate.
And this outreach (of Democrats and Republicans) using bloggers so far seems to have largely meant that the outreach person reaches out to his or her perceived side. Ditto on all these conference calls government and candidate bigwigs make to bloggers (this site has people of varying viewpoints so we are never included on any of these candidate call lists).
A bigger issue is whether working for a political campaign forever taints a blogger . However, many blogs are now so openly advocates and extended op-ed pages more than original news sources, that this is probably irrelevant. When people read most blogs, they know they’re not reading meticulously-balanced facts or new reporting.
But make no mistake about it: most people who blog have written a comment or two that may have been unbalanced, not temperate and, if they alllow such language on their weblog, not suitable for a 7-year old.
So we’re in a new era where bloggers are now going to be vetted in an effort to strike out at campaigns and candidates (and perhaps some will see it as a way to strike out at the specific bloggers to trim their larger influence).
Be forewarned: it’s likely to happen now to all bloggers who want to join campaign staffs of any party.
The bar has been moved with a little less freedom and opportunity now for bloggers — unless those with ambitions beyond “hey, do you want to exchange links” start to temper their words and language realizing that, more than ever, anything you write can and will be held against you. A blogger getting hired for a high-profile campaign staff was easier on Feb. 8, 2006.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.