Blogging and Sponsorship and Openness

Jane_the_Great writes "In an article in the Wall Street Journal it is "revealed" that during the 2004 primaries, the Howard Dean campaign hired bloggers hoping that positive things would be said of Dean in the blogs. The news is from the horse's mouth." It's hard to believe that the WSJ is equating prominently disclosed campaign consulting with secret payments from the U.S. Government treasury to TV personalities in order to promote Republican policies, but they are. (Obeying media rule #1, "Both sides are equally bad", even if they aren't.) Nevertheless, there's an interesting, deeper issue: how transparent should blogging (and all media) be? How could transparency possibly be enforced?

Very transparent.

[Solder Fumes (797270)]

No clouding the motives there, michael, that's for sure. I guess the man just itches for a good 'ol flamewar once in a while, so why not start one right in the article post?

Re:Very transparent.

[Hank Reardon (534417)]

Heh. Ya think?

Was he hired from Kuro5hin or something?

Re:Very transparent.

[STrinity (723872)]

One more reason we should be able to mod the actual stories and not just responses to them.

journalistic standards

[Profane MuthaFucka (574406)]

So, are they suggesting that Bloggers should be held to journalistic standards? Absolute rubbish. The journals that are given away freely here on /. are nothing but blogs. To even think that these should be bastions of journalism is just mind boggling.

Why not criticise People magazine, or the Enquirer? Same thing, I think. Even Jon Stewart of the Daily Show calls his show "fake news".

You think those bloggers might have responded yet?

[bharlan (49602)]

Hmm, I wonder if those bloggers might have posted any response to this story? After all, they've only had 12 hours so far today. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/14/02014/6287 [dailykos.com], http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/13/231623/665 [mydd.com], and http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/004427.html [pandagon.net]

Blogging doesn't need to be transparent.

[Icarus1919 (802533)]

When people stop going to a blog for information because they don't think the person tells the truth, or is otherwise misinforming them (purposeful or otherwise) then the blog will die. The process is self correcting. There are plenty of blogs out there that no one reads because it's a pack of lies or it provides no information. Blogs that are discovered to be propoganda machines will suffer the same fate.

Re:Blogging doesn't need to be transparent.

[Ingolfke (515826)]

There are plenty of blogs out there that no one reads because it's a pack of lies or it provides no information.

Nope, liars and opionists flourish in our society, they just have to be entertaining. Blogs that are full of lies and factless opinions will flourish if they present their case with flare and if their conclusions (logical or otherwise) are inline with the beliefs of the people reading the blog. Most people have lost their ability and desire to destinguish a valid argument and would prefer to b

Re:Blogging doesn't need to be transparent.

[Marvelicious (752980)]

Riiiiiigghhtt... Hmmmmm, unless the visitors to said blog are like minded people who hear only what they want to... Your statement could be said of things like NPR as well, yet Limbaugh thrives. People like propaganda machines that support their opinion.

Re:Blogging doesn't need to be transparent.

[CmdrChillupa (166635)]

Theoretically you could hold the same thing up for any form of media: online, print, tv. If people stop reading or viewing it because they think it's untruthful ad sales go down and it dies.

I hold out CBS, Fox News and Michael Moore documentaries as examples that prove you wrong.

CBS did a story that was proven wrong. They apologized. The left still loves them, the right hates them now.

Fox News. Need I say more. The left still hates them, the right still loves them.

Michael Moore is really just in he

au contraire

[Trepidity (597)]

The most popular blogs out there are mostly packs of lies. People like hardcore partisan blogs that will always spin their side as good and their opponents as bad. There are few (no?) blogs that take nuanced, case-by-case views of the issues, and support whichever side they think is right in each given situation.

Wow... it happens on both sides

[jhtrih (218203)]

Amazing. My mind has just been blow. I though the democrats were the untouchable good guys, fighting the evil nazi republicans. Now I have no idea what to believe... must flip back and forth between Fox, CNN, and the BBC to understand how I should feel about this... and then blog about it...

Re:Wow... it happens on both sides

[Anonymous Brave Guy (457657)]

Wow! A thread about political backstabbing, and it's taken as many as four posts to invoke Godwin's Law...

It was transparent

[gtaluvit (218726)]

Markos addresses it Here [dailykos.com]

He was transparent about it and kept a constant reminder about it at the top of the page. Hardly close to the Williams scandal.

Re:It was transparent

[Derling Whirvish (636322)]

Claiming it was "technical work" like web-site designing is a far cry from being paid for influence peddling. That's not "transparent" at all. It's devious and disingenuous.

Don't forget Thune

[gad_zuki! (70830)]

Where's the "Zephyr" police and the WSJ on these guys? No disclosure here. Where's the outrage? Oh right, the Republican double standard. From here. [cbsnews.com]

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.

Re:It was transparent

[rpg25 (470383)]

I don't know what your definition of "consulting" is, but in my book, it's a profession. If he had said up at the top that he was "volunteering," that would be one thing. But this is a clear statement that he was employed by the Dean campaign.

That's miles away from the scandal, and it's just plain disingenuous of the WSJ to make it seem otherwise. I've always liked their paper (but not the editorial page); I'm appalled and depressed by the way they're using the news section to editorialize here. Boo!

They don't equate them

[moebius_4d (26199)]

In fact, the WSJ article explictly makes the same point - that in one case, governement funds were used (although there is a mention that the funds may have been used for media buys and not as direct compensation.)

So that's a big difference in the conduct of the payers: one used tax money and the other used political contributions. But it makes little or no difference in the ethical lapse of the payees - people who represent themselves as presenting their honest opinion and who are taking money from one of the parties about whom they opine.

We wouldn't think a stock analyst could be unbiased if he was on the payroll of one of the companies he reviewed, even if he'd been favorable before he got on the payroll and continued to be so afterwards. Why is Markos any different? A political opinion writer secretly on the payroll of a campaign is an ethical problem, slice it however you want.

Re:They don't equate them

[Kiryat Malachi (177258)]

Markos was different because it wasn't secret; he openly admitted he was on payroll, and even had a disclaimer at the head of his blog.

Re:They don't equate them

[FatRatBastard (7583)]

Except that Markos said he wasn't being wasn't for policy, but for "technical [dailykos.net]" consulting.

But for the record, I will not discuss my role within the Dean campaign, other than to say it's technical, not message or strategy. I will also not discuss any of my other clients, including their identities (I have non-disclose agreements to which I must adhere).

However, according to Zephyr Teachout [blogspot.com] the money wasn't paid to Kos for any technical consulting, but to buy his loyalty.

On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.

While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime. To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal.

It was basically all message.

Still pales in comparison to what Armstrong did.

Re:They don't equate them

[Kiryat Malachi (177258)]

Zephyr's statements are probably as questionable as Markos's, since Zephyr is basically on a crusade right now to force bloggers to adhere to journalistic standards (whether or not you think this is good, it is definitely something that might affect statements made by Zephyr). And Markos at least revealed the connection, if not the possible depth of it.

And yeah, it still pales in comparison to taking government money to support a government viewpoint, and not admitting to any of it.

Re:They don't equate them

[tgibbs (83782)]

However, according to Zephyr Teachout the money wasn't paid to Kos for any technical consulting, but to buy his loyalty.

However, it is also made clear that there was no actual transaction or quid pro quo. They simply hoped that as a result of working for them, he would be more positively disposed toward them.

We were paying him in part because WE hoped that he, and Kos, would blog positive things about Dean, but that was never explicit or implicit in the contract. This has to do with OUR motives, not so

Re:They don't equate them

[Mike Markley (9536)]

... Except that if you read the rest of the article, it wasn't particularly secret.

Mr. Moulitsas said they were paid $3,000 a month for four months and he noted that he had posted a disclosure near the top of his daily blog that he worked for the Dean campaign doing "technical consulting." Mr. Armstrong said he shut down his site when he went to work for the campaign, then resumed posting after his contract ended.

Re:They don't equate them

[mmkkbb (816035)]

which is EXACTLY what the dept. of ed shill should have done.

what really worries me is that the dude thinks he didn't do anything wrong.

Re:They don't equate them

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

The WSJ wa sall in favor of Hitler and Mussolini - "Good for business".

They are in favor of lay-offs and Unemployment - "Good for business".

not about result but motives

[feelyoda (622366)]

This is interesting because it doesn't matter what Daily Kos thought it was getting into with an advisory roll. The Dean folks intended to get good, free press from it, and milked the blogs. Read more about it here [instapundit.com].

For those who think the issues with the Dept. of Education paying off a journalist are new, it was actually more common under the Clinton administration, and equally bad.

Re:not about result but motives

[rjstanford (69735)]

For those who think the issues with the Dept. of Education paying off a journalist are new, it was actually more common under the Clinton administration, and equally bad.

I hadn't heard this before - do you have any news links about it? That's not intended as disbelief or criticism, I seriously would like to read more about it.

Politics

[gmajor (514414)]

Thank you, Michael, for going out of your way, and out of the story's way to point out Republican "badness". (That was a sarcastic remark)

Why can't the same be done for liberal-biased articles from the NY Times that get posted on Slashdot? Or why can't Michael Moore writeups highlight his twisting of the truth?

Yes this is flamebait, but so is the article writeup.

Biased Bias

[Concern (819622)]

We have to learn a new vocabluary in this country, or we will never be able to talk about fairness and accuracy properly.

What appears to be evolving in the crucible of American politics is a startling robust form of doublethink. Conservatives have unquestionably mastered it; it's not clear if other political groups are for the moment less able or less willing.

Fox News is a propaganda organization; it is so biased as to basically redefine the concept of bias in the U.S. media. But how does it defend itself? By exclaiming that it is the most fair, and the most balanced. In fact, by going even further accusing everyone else of bias.

This kind of audacity is more associated with religious figureheads and communist states. But regardless of who is using it most effectively this week (and believe me, I am cynical about all American professional politicians, regardless of professed ideology), the problem is that the approach is sound, and based on good cognitive psych. It exploits a weakness in the way people think and reason. In layman's terms, it short-circuits the brain. Sadly, vehemence and a threatening posture do figure deeply into the calculus of our decision-making.

When you see through it, you realize it's an extraordinarily cynical trick. The problem is that many, many people are confused by it. In fact, much as Orwell observed, the lie is embraced especially well by people who know it is a lie. These are the people who, for instance, engage in revert wars in Wikipedia over the Fox News entry.

It is the human's great strenght and weakness: we are fully capable of lively psychological engagement with paradoxes and contradictions.

In order to prevent societal free-fall, it will be necessary for each of us to learn to see through this kind of technique, call a spade a spade. To not be confused or intimidated by hypocrisy, in other words.

"the media"?

[wankledot (712148)]

For fuck's sake, blogging is not "the media" any more than me telling my friends about the CD I just bought is "the media." Am I the only person who puts absolutely no stock in what some schmuck on the internet has to say? Or at least, take it with great big grains of salt?

I'm Shocked!

[yipper (159272)]

Hasn't it always been the case that the
guy with the ink/camera/microphone/blog
gets to write whatever he pleases.... including
what will make him some $$?

That's the beauty of the first amendment.

Sounds good to me!

[14erCleaner (745600)]

I think being paid to promote something in a public forum is a great idea!

Provided I'm the one being paid, of course...

Anybody who thinks weblogs, in general, convey useful information is an idiot; they're like newspaper columns with no editors.

Not from the horse's mouth.

[abb3w (696381)]

While neither group's conduct is appropriate, equating the two indicates that the news source is further back on the horse.

Ok, here it goes.

[CashCarSTAR (548853)]

Here's the story. Not in an exactly, but roughtly chronological order.

Kos and Jerome run MyDD. Endorses and is are VERY avid supporters of Dean.

Dean's campaign hires MyDD to do various technical consulting of various types.

Jerome, who starts to blog for Dean stops his own site. Everybody pretty much goes over to Kos' site, and Kos lets it well known that he does consulting for Dean. Nobody in the community (and DailyKos is a political version of Slashdot. It's a community site) cares.

Skip ahead a year and a half.

Zephyr Teachout (lead blogger for the old Dean campaign) is upset that the ethical people are taking all the money and bribe taking out of political blogging and writes a slash piece in the WSJ accusing Kos and Jerome of not being corrupt ENOUGH.

What Kos and Jerome did is basically equivilent to what Gabe and Tycho do over at PA, getting paid for various side projects, a lot of whom they endorse/give good reviews/whatever. Is there any problem with that?

Of course not.

Re:Ok, here it goes.

[Kiryat Malachi (177258)]

Actually, from what info I could find on what they were actually *paid* to do, his role was mainly technical/strategy, in the sense of trying to help determine strategy, not in the sense of promoting it. They were paid for their work setting up the electronic infrastructure of the Dean campaign, and for their advice on direction of that infrastructure. Nowhere were they contractually obligated to promote Dean's message, as far as I can tell.

If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in s

Whoa whoa whoa!

[sterno (16320)]

Yes, Dean hired bloggers. One of the bloggers they hired stopped writing his own blog during that time. The other blogger continually posted on his original blog saying that he was salaried by the Dean campaign.

So let's not blow this out of proportion folks. If they had concealed what they were doing, that would be an entirely different beast. They met the basics of journalistic integrity, revealing that they were in fact being paid for their work.

Read more about it here [salon.com].

"Both Sides are Equally Bad" Cartoon

[rjstanford (69735)]

This was covered pretty well I think by one of Simpson's political cartoons: http://idrewthis.org/2004/bothsides.html [idrewthis.org]. Its sadly accurate.

IMHO disclosure should be law

[digitalgimpus (468277)]

Yep...you got that.

This isn't intended to start a freedom of speach flame... want that? Don't bother replying. Pure opinion here...

preface
I was asked just today to provide links to a commercial website, who apparantly feels either my google pagerank is beneficial to them, or they feel I get enough traffic to help them. Did I do it? Absolutely not.

I get a few of these.

Why don't I?
I don't think it's ethical. I base my blog on myself. I consider it a reflection of me. Anything I post, I believe

Important distinction.

[Guano_Jim (157555)]

The Dean campaign used their money to pay bloggers. The bloggers fully disclosed the payment.

The Bush administration used your money (assuming you're a USian) to pay off Armstrong Williams. Williams didn't disclose a thing.

This whole tempest in a teapot is an attempt by the right to blur the issue by creating some kind of he-said/she-said equivalency.

Don't fall for it.

Uhhh...

[Sheepdot (211478)]

What they did was equivalent to paying someone in the media for some consulting time so he/she could explain how best to do press releases. Then the person in the media mentioning it to those that view their "show".

Granted, it's not a huge deal, but I imagine liberals would be throwing a tizzyfit if it was Bill O'Reilly consulting the Republicans. I don't really see conservatives giving crap about two bloggers drumming up support for their favorite candidate, who they happened to also work for. The only pe

It's the village green

[jlusk4 (2831)]

The Internet, which is the world's greatest P2P network, brings the bullhorn to the common man, gives everyone the printing press, yada yada.

We're all back in the village green. Anybody can yammer.

So, we all have to figure out who's the village idiot and who's the sage. And who's yesterday's sage but now today's idiot.

We all have to think. Shocking, disappointing, I know.

Reputation matters. Those of you with good reputations, please don't pull a Pierre Salinger [cnn.com].

Remember, all your sources of info are biased, somehow. Some grossly, some negligibly. Find the bias, find the reputation, take with a grain of salt.

Just because some taxi driver, somebody you met in a laundromat, your lunatic {right,left}-wing officemate said it, you Read It On The Internet doesn't make it so. Even if it had cool graphics on the page.

Why should the blogsphere be any different? Why should anybody be surprised? Geez.

>:(

John.

Re:Sources please?

[Kiryat Malachi (177258)]

Columnist denying it. [townhall.com]

USA Today nailing him on it. [usatoday.com]

Washington Post doing the same. [washingtonpost.com]

FCC investigation into Armstrong Williams payola. [bloomberg.com]

Seriously, this is not a conspiracy; it happened. You can argue whether (as USA Today states) he was contractually obligated to be favorable towards vouchers, but he definitely took money to run ads on them... and immediately afterward, wrote columns favorable of the Bush administration's position on the issue. This would be *incredibly* questionable, in and of itself. If he took the money with an additional obligation of running those columns, it is quite possibly illegal.

Re:Sources please?

[torinth (216077)]

He's obliquely referring to Armstrong Williams who owned the last week of non-tsunami news. The Department of Education gave him about $240,000 of taxpayer money to promote the No Child Left Behind program. Neither he nor the department disclosed this payoff while he received frequent airtime as an independent commentator and television host. Since we generally pretend that independent means "not paid gross sums of government money to promote government policy" there was a big stir when this news broke.

Re:Sources please?

[Kiryat Malachi (177258)]

No.. it was treasury money, not Treasury money. It came from the treasury (wallet) of the US government. It specifically came from the budget of the Education Department, but they, like all Cabinet Departments, draw their funds from the treasury.

Gee, capitalization making a difference, who knew?

But what if...

[PornMaster (749461)]

- You must lean left.

But what if your... well... you know... thingie... leans to the right?

Amen

[Swamii (594522)]

Wow, finally some clarity and truth here at Slashdot. Well said, you hit the mark on several points including Slashdot's 'follow the leader' mentality, be secular or else, be anti-Republican or else, be running Linux or else, be running Firefox or else, you pointed out the obvious Roland connection, the hypocritical unethical nature of Slashdot and slashbotters, you pointed out, damn well if I might add, how people here don't argue based on facts but on biases and prejudices.

Amen man, good to see some trut

Re:How could transparency possibly be enforced?

[stratjakt (596332)]

Your right. More people should have been listening to the bastions of truth at CBS news.

For example, I have in my posession a .pdf from 1938 that says that Truman and Hitler were boyfriend and girlfriend!

Re:Competition

[PornMaster (749461)]

Anyone charismatic can get a following of believers... the blogosphere's no different. People seek out others who agree with them.

All that having more blogs out there does is makes more places for various nutjobs to hang out.

because every source is biased

[grahamsz (150076)]

Every source, no matter how impartial it claims to be, is bound to have some sort of bias.

The key to finding value in those sources comes from being able to identify the bias and interpret around it.

For example /. is "news for nerds who dislike microsoft and sco and hold apple on a pedastal", and with that in mind i can find useful stuff here sometimes.

Re:Michael:

[siskbc (598067)]

To repeat the previous poster without being crass, michael, you can make your comments on the comment page. We really don't care about your opinions. At all. And they really aren't insightful enough to justify you ranting about the article on the front page.

Re:outrageous

[Ray Radlein (711289)]

He's an Editor. He edits. I've had two article submissions accepted here; both of them have been edited before going out with my name still attached to them. That's just the way Slashdot has always operated.

Furthermore, "reveal" deserved scare quotes around it in that sentence -- given that not only was it something that was public knowledge, but that it was something that the Wall Street Journal had, themselves, mentioned before in articles about both Markos and Jerome.

If I wrote a lead sentence of "