Posted on 12/09/2004 2:40:58 PM PST by swilhelm73
Internet blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks. With the same First Amendment protections as newspapers, blogs are increasingly gaining influence.
While many are must-reads for political junkies, are some Internet blogs also being used as proxies for campaigns? In the nation’s hottest Senate race, this past year, the answer was yes.
Little over a month ago, the first Senate party leader in 52 years was ousted when South Dakota Republican John Thune defeated top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle. While more than $40 million was spent in the race, saturating the airwaves with advertising, a potentially more intriguing front was also opened.
The two leading South Dakota blogs – websites full of informal analysis, opinions and links – were authored by paid advisers to Thune’s campaign.
The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the National Journal first cited Federal Election Commission documents showing that Jon Lauck, of Daschle v Thune, and Jason Van Beek, of South Dakota Politics, were advisers to the Thune campaign.
The documents, also obtained by CBS News, show that in June and October the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000. Lauck had also worked on Thune’s 2002 congressional race.
Both blogs favored Thune, but neither gave any disclaimer during the election that the authors were on the payroll of the Republican candidate.
No laws have apparently been broken. Case precedent on political speech as it pertains to blogs does not exist. But where journalists' careers may be broken on ethics violations, bloggers are writing in the Wild West of cyberspace. There remains no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard.
At minimum, the role of blogs in the Daschle-Thune race is a telling harbinger for 2006 and 2008. Some blogs could become new vehicles for the old political dirty tricks.
Like all media, blogs hold the potential for abuse. Experts point out that blogs' unregulated status makes them particularly attractive outlets for political attack.
“The question is: What are the appropriate regulations on the Internet?" asked Kathleen Jamieson, an expert on political communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communications. “It’s evolved into an area that we need to do more thinking about it.
“If you put out flyers, you have to disclaim it, you have to represent who you are,” Jamieson said. “If you put out an ad you have to put a disclaimer on it. But we don’t have those sorts of regulations for political content, that is campaign-financed on the Internet.”
First Amendment attorney Kevin Goldberg called blogs “definitely new territory.”
“[The question is] whether blogs are analogous to a sole person campaigning or whether they are very much a media publication, which is essentially akin to an online newspaper,” said Goldberg, who is the legal counsel to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
“Ultimately, I think, the decision will have to come down to whether the public will be allowed to decide whether bloggers are credible or whether some regulation needs to occur.”
Generally, the Supreme Court has ruled that restrictions on political advocacy by corporations and unions does not apply to media or individuals. The reasoning has been that media competition insures legitimacy. This has historically been the argument against monopolies in media ownership.
Hypothetically, if The Washington Post discovered that The New York Times had a reporter being paid by the Bush campaign it would report it. If proven, the suspect reporter would be fired and likely never work in mainstream journalism again. Hence, the courts have been satisfied with the industry’s ability to regulate itself.
This is what happened in the case of Duncan Black. The author of the popular liberal blog Atrios, Black wrote under a pseudonym. During part of this period, Black was a senior fellow at a liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America.
“People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that it’s partisan,” Jamieson said. “The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan.”
That is not a legal problem, however, but one of ethics. Black eventually claimed credit for his blog. Fellow bloggers heavily publicized his political connections. And Black continued blogging.
Defenders of Black point out that unlike the South Dakota blogs, he was not working on behalf of a campaign. And clearly, absent blog ethical guidelines, what Black did was not that different than many others.
“He is perfectly free to write the blog. You can criticize him for it but he had a perfect Constitutional right to do what he did,” said Eugene Volokh, who teaches free speech law at UCLA Law School and authors his own blog, the Volokh Conspiracy.
“People are free to say whatever they want to say and not reveal any financial inducements and not reveal in whose pay they are,” Volokh added. “Now there is an exception for speech that urges the election or defeat of a particular candidate.” But where this exception relates to Internet blogs is unclear.
Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech.
“I think those questions are going to have to be asked and answered,” said Lillian BeVier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Virginia. “It’s going to be an issue and it should be an issue.”
And from this we are to believe that Tiny Tom didn't have the same dynamic at work for him?
Two words; Dan Rather
CBS retaliation for RatherGate. The liberal media will attempt to paint all Internet news as unreliable and suspect. The next time they choose to ignore a story like the SwiftVets, and promote stories like the TANG fraud, and bloggers flay them for it, they will of course blame the bloggers for being partisan, and unreliable.
This is rich, coming from CBS. They are using blogs themselves to further an agenda :
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13877_CBS_Recruiting_Anti-War_Bloggers
How does CBS explain that?
I was about to post a similar thought, freedom for me but not for thee, typical leftist thought pattern.
FYI..very interesting..
Anyone know if any blogger has ever been sued for libel?
"The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan."
OK, what comic wrote this article? 'Fess up wil you. I think the author has his blogs confused with the mainstraem media.
Put a suit, a $1000 blow dried hair cut,some pancake & rouge on them and prop 'em up in front of a camera (don't forget the minor in Sociology), THEN, they will be respectable!!!
They're influence on trying to form public opinion is slipping away and their true agenda will become more and more apparent.
The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them.
PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON,letter to Judge John Tyler, June 28, 1804
It is additionally heartwarming that CBS has discovered Red State America, which South Dakota could be a model for. I just wonder where CBS has been for the past 18 or more years, when the Souix Falls Argus Leader has had Daschle college friend David Kranz as it's top political reporter. The Argus Leader has been the big foot media of South Dakota with all the state's smaller papers and media outlets following its lead.
Below I've excerpted just a couple articles on this bias, which I discovered after intensive investigative research, say 3 minutes using Google, because I remembered an article about this bias in reading about the Daschle v Thune campaign last summer.
Clearly, CBS just cannot stand it, that non-liberals are now getting their message out and having an impact. One funny thing I found out, is that Daschle had 515 campaign staffers to run his campaign. Thune had 18 and the GOP had 70. Ignored by SeeBS.
Clearly, the bias at the Argus Leader is institutional. The people making the decisions about story placement and headline writing know that what they do has a major impact on public opinion in South Dakota.
Somehow, their decisions almost always cut in favor of Tom Daschle. Who makes these decisions? The editors. Who are the editors? The executive editor is Randell Beck, but the executive editor is more involved with the long-range visions and goals of the newspaper, and has less to do with the day-to-day decision-making. The managing editor and the assistant editor are involved in the day-to-day decisionmaking on things like story placement and headline writing.
Interestingly, the assistant editor of the Argus Leader is a fellow by the name of Patrick Lalley, who in the early 1990's was the editor of the now defunct Sioux Falls Tempest, a free alternative weekly. I believe Lalley may have even founded the Tempest. The Tempest was known as the Sioux Falls version of the Village Voice, and advocated issues from a far-left perspective. There's certainly nothing wrong with advocating left-wing views, but there is something wrong with advocating left-wing views under the cloak of "objectivity."
I'll be looking up old copies of the Tempest in the coming weeks to investigate whether Lalley has left a paper trail that might explain what's behind the institutional bias at the Argus Leader.
More at the link: http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2004/week18/
MORE KRANZ/ARGUS BIAS
EXPOSEDwww.southdakotapolitics.blogspot.com
Sunday, August 17, 2003
KRANZ WATCH: Today's edition of the Chicago Sun-Times contains Bob Novak's report on Tom Daschle's claiming of the "homestead deduction" for his $1.9 million home in Washington, a tax exemption that is available only to those who list their home as their "principal" residence. Novak also published the same report yesterday on townhall.com. Novak's report followed up Jeff Gannon's scoop.
In his Sunday column today, David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters, ignores this news item regarding Tom Daschle, but does manage to plug Tom Daschle's new book, "Like No Other Time," due out this fall.
David Kranz's pro-Daschle bias, despite holding himself out as an objective observer of South Dakota politics, has long been a topic on this blog.
More at the link: http://www.sdakotagop.com/newsdetail.asp?iNewsID=189
HAHAHAHA......oh my sides hurt from laughing!
CBS got burned and, if you ask me, they're going after the internet now.
Only true for this hypothetical, one against President Bush. Case in point - Paul Begala. He remained on the Kerry payroll and broadcasted his propoganda while collecting a paycheck from CNN.
Consistency is not a liberal strong point.
Exactly! You are so right.
“The question is: What are the appropriate regulations on the Internet?" asked Kathleen Jamieson, an expert on political communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communications. “It’s evolved into an area that we need to do more thinking about it.
Leave us the hell alone; we'll police ourselves!
The writer of this is a fool. Every major item on FR gets run through a filter by many posters who have various experiences and points of view.
At minimum, the role of blogs in the Daschle-Thune race is a telling harbinger for 2006 and 2008. Some blogs could become new vehicles for the old political dirty tricks.Like all media, blogs hold the potential for abuse. Experts point out that blogs' unregulated status makes them particularly attractive outlets for political attack.
As if the MSM with Fahrenheit 9/11 in theaters (and the media hype AROUND the release of the film) and Rock The Vote's phoney DRAFT scare were any more legitimate because they went through traditional media.
Pbbbbbbbbbtttt. Big raspberry award.
But.... but... but CBS naturally does not engage in politically motivated attacks or disseminate known forgeries on the air. <sarcasm Its all the bloggers' especially that damn Buckhead's fault for upsetting the status quo ante.
LOLOLOLOL. We Pajamahadeen don't have any professional society or code of ethics? CBS had em both and still ended up with egg on its face!
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