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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?
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?
It can't be enforced
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.
Since I'm not a conspiracy follower, please provide some sources for this reference.
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.
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.
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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?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
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.
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.
Have you read my blog lately?
Your right. More people should have been listening to the bastions of truth at CBS news.
.pdf from 1938 that says that Truman and Hitler were boyfriend and girlfriend!
For example, I have in my posession a
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
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.
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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.
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.
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!
for me, anyway.
I've never liked Markos "screw them" Zuniga, but what you're all focusing on is a non-story. He disclosed to his readers that he was taking money; Williams, who made no disclosure, deserves whatever happens to him.
What interests me is the difference in what those involved thought they were doing:
Zuniga thought he was taking money to be a "consultant" and give advice.
The Dean campaign thought they were paying him to be a shill and say good things about them.
See the difference? I think bloggers who take money should disclose that fact to their readers, ahead of time and not after the fact. But ideally, bloggers should not take money (except for explicit advertisements); it can lead too easily to a situation where the blogger is being taken advantage of.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
You must base your worldview entirely on Slashdot headlines. You must ignore the innaccuracy and editorial shortcomings of the Slashdot staff. You must buy into the groupthink of the comment threads. This is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE.
... Anything involving Mozilla is flawless and perfect.
This guy knows that unlike many stifling, practically religious, communities, iconoclasm gets modded highly here, or he wouldn't have penned this screed (who reads zero-level AC's?).
Post the lamest, most obvious, and most unfunny jokes imaginable. They will be modded up "+5 Funny." Even Malda couldn't stand it any longer and made Funny mods not count toward karma.
No sense of humor: check.
Everything involving Linux is flawless and perfect.
Yeah, intelligent criticisms of systems never get a fair hearing here. Duh... Maybe he hasn't been around long. Critical ideas get modded highly all the time... and everyone knows it, including you.
What if something is actually good, or actually bad? Better not reach a strong consensus on it, otherwise we might be subjected to flamebait from ignorant wannabe-elitists...
Whenever someone has a criticism of the current moderation system, refer to Taco's "future moderation system."
Can you fill this one in for me? Not even sure what the joke is here.
You must lean left. You must obsess over George W. Bush and make Bush jokes whenever possible, no matter how irrelevant to the topic. In political articles, you must upmod anti-Bush comments and downmod independent or pro-Bush comments. Use the "Overrated" moderator whenever possible.
Let me go out on a limb here. Criticism of our current political administration is a sign of a healthy, intelligent community.
The fact that they have not yet really succeeded in gaming the slashdot moderation system frustrates the repulican net squad to absolute conniptions.
I am actually willing to go out on a limb here and say leaning left is perfectly good for any community. If slashdot is not prone to victimization by America's latest naked emperors (faux libertarianism, excessive religious interference in state affairs, energy-driven imperialism, etc), so much the better for them - and it obviously really galls you that any "bias" here is the result of a democratic process and not something you can just blame on a "biased" editor.
Use the term "FUD" religiously in everyday conversation.
Sign of the times.
Demonization is far easier than debating the issues.
Don't you know it!
Whenever Linux Torvalds says anything, it is newsworthy and infallible... Linus does not make mistakes... arrogance and closed-minded attitude.
Lies... straw man fallacy... and disengenuousness.
Believe articles like "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," based entirely on the idea that Microsoft is evil because Windows is used by the government there. Ignore the fact that China has its own custom Linux distribution called Red Flag Linux. Slashdot is unbiased and holy.
This is a whopper. I think he's actually suggesting we would not demonize a company collaborating with a totalitarian regime on the basis of its products source license.
Wow man, you hit that out of the park. Not.
Ignore that Slashdot is corporate-owned, by a company called OSTG that employs Rob Malda and makes money off selling OSS products. Ignore the conflict of interests in running a "tech news" site that coincidentally posts articles critical of competitors. Ignore that if Microsoft owned a tech news site that did the same, it would be criticized for it.
Oooh... wave the word "corporate" around like it's a shrunken voodoo head.
No single news outlet could pass your implied standards. And by the way, Microsoft does run a news organization, and we do criticize their biases, when they arise.
All part of this the
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