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FEC Rules Bloggers Are Journalists
Dotnaught writes "The Federal Election Commission today issued an advisory opinion that finds the Fired Up network of blogs qualifies for the 'press exemption' to federal campaign finance laws. The press exemption, as defined by Congress, is meant to assure 'the unfettered right of the newspapers, TV networks, and other media to cover and comment on political campaigns.' The full ruling is available at the FEC site. A noteworthy passage: '...an entity otherwise eligible for the press exception would not lose its eligibility merely because of a lack of objectivity...'"
> "...an entity otherwise eligible for the press exception would not lose
:)
> its eligibility merely because of a lack of objectivity..."
Well of course not. Otherwise they would have to close down CBS and Fox News right off the bat. And then come back and get CNN, ABC and NBC the next day. On the third day they would shutter the NY Times, the Washington Post and pull the plug on the EIB Network's sat feed.
Of course by day four folks would show up in Washington with their 'Sporting Goods' and voice their 'opinion' about Campaign Finance Reform, reminding Congress that in the end the 1st Amendment, along with the rest are ultimately preserved by a willingness to exercise the 2nd Amendment.
Democrat delenda est
Because some people think that there ought to be limits to Free Speech, it is required that government define exactly what types of Free Speech are really free and which ones ought not be so free.
McCain/Feingold campaign finance laws, which limit the Freedom of Speech of anyone with a political opinion, forces us to define what types of speech should remain legal.
It's sad and disappointing.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
A decision by the FCC that I can actually agree with and think is good for everybody. Will wonders never cease?!
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Freedom of speech applies to political speech. Campaign finance laws are blatantly unconstitutional. This ruling is offensive because it implies that only established and recognized "press" entities qualify -- and the government, whose interest is markedly not neutral, gets to decide who is and isn't "press".
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
This development is indeed encouraging; however, the need to define free speech explicitly through enumeration is troublesome. As it was intended, free speech should be free speech as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others. That may seem too nebulous a definition, but it's really quite cut and dry: say what you will so long as it does not deleteriously impact others. Why has such a simple and powerful idea become so diluted?
I think the people trying to "censor" blogs do have a legitimate point: you can bet that everyone who is campaigning for something will set up blogs, pretending to be independant, that sing their praises. That's harder to do with "real" publications because they cost money to set up and run, and their ownership is public record.
I guess this is just part of the price of free speech. I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog.
I'd also like to point out a fundamental difference between bloggers and journalists. I have worked at a newspaper, and spent all day calling people, attending government meetings, doing research and asking more questions before I wrote something. Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Because a newspaper has advertisers and subscribers, it has to protect its reputation as being truthful. A blogger has nothing at stake. A newspaper also expects to get sued and tries to have a "truth defense" ready - to cover their butts by being accurate. They might not always succeed, but they have reason to try. I don't know whether any bloggers have been sued for libel yet, but I bet some will be. If you're going to "publish" something, you really do need to check your facts, and that usually takes more time than a hobbyist has.
CBS - left
Fox - right
CNN - left
ABC -left
NBC -left
NY Times - left
Washington Post - right
EIB - right, but never claims to be "press", usually comments on "press". Certainly not a "primary source"... I'll give it 1/2 right.
So, from this sample we have 2:1 left bias in the media.
Is the ruling pro-right, pro-left, or just correct?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In a few years, there may be no more print newspapers.
Freedom of the press must survive though, so this seems a fair response to our evolving times.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
> At least you started with Fox News...fair and balanced my ass.
Of course they aren't balanced. Which, in a sort of paradox, makes them balanced since they now singlehandendly counterbalance the 'progressive' biases of the rest of the nets. Sort of a TV version of Limbaugh's infamous "I don't need equal time, I am equal time!".
Personally I don't mind bias all that much as long as it is in the open and Fox does often admit that while they make an effort to present both sides, they do come at issues with a conservative viewpoint. Neither Bill O'Reilly or Maureen Dowd bother me since both are pretty open about their position advocacy. What pisses me off is when asshats like Dan Rather or Helen Thomas claim with a straight face to be impartial in their reporting when they are as biased as Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken.
Or take the Sunday morning yak yak shows. I don't get Face the Nation over my local CBS station, but both NBC's Meet the Press and ABC's This Week program are hosted by former Democratic Party aparatchiks with no major experience in journalism prior to taking the helm at their respective high prestige posts? Harmless Coincidence? We are supposed to believe both are presenting a 'balanced' view of politics?
Democrat delenda est
It wasn't pulled off the air by government regulators, it was a backlash from viewers and advertisers if I recall. Ultimately the market prevails :).
www.lonseidman.com
In Soviet Russia, government decides who is a journalist and who is not.
Oh wait...
That's more of a reality show.
I'm curious, how come you can be so obsessed by a private group deciding to pull something like that becuase of private reaction, but be (apparently) perfectly O.K. with the fact that the FEC can tell you what you can say?
It's time to quit the petty left/right bullshit. We have more important matters to deal with, like simple freedoms we used to have. Let's deal with those important issues, then get back to our petty bickering.
Thanks.
A modern day witchhunt.
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2005/10/t he_myth.html
I guess it is time for every person with a blog to update their resume. Journalist has a nice ring to it.
Ascii artist &
Does anyone actually think that anyone but the party faithful would actually buy into a seemingly "independent blogger's" pro-candidate writings? Take for existance, Right Wing News. The site is blatantly pro-Republican, to the point that its owner won't even vote for a libertarian or constitution party candidate if the Republican is even farther to the left than the Democrat. Many "right wing bloggers" for example, are just Republican Party hacks.
I'd imagine that there are two broad sides in all of this: those who are independent regardless of ideology and those who shill for the bifactional ruling party know as the Republican and Democratic parties. Who cares if the RNC or DNC pays someone to sing the praises of their candidate? Unless they're outright lying, they'll just garner the attention of the party faithful. The bloggers in the first category and most of their friends and readers won't buy into it because they're on the opposite side of the philosophical fence.
But what is amusing here is that blogging is just a way of maintaining a website. Most bloggers are not journalists because of the simple fact that their work cannot be considered journalistic. Perhaps Michelle Malkin's blog should count, but it'd be a cold day in hell that I'd consider the average blogger to be a journalist. If you're not a professional jouralist, then you aren't one IMO. The concept of a "citizen journalist" is redundant. The point of using "citizen" as a modifier is to show that you are a civilian doing a government job. Hence "citizen soldier" for example. That's a miltiaman, a man who fights as part of a civilian army organized in a military-like hierarchy. He's a soldier, but not a government soldier thus he's a "citizen soldier." Since America has only a lame-brained attempt at state media (*cough*CPB*cough*) there is no way you can qualify as a "citizen journalist." Either journalism is your career or it is something you amateurishly ape.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
> If a reporter or editor wants to endorse Bill Gates for president, they can do it. They can write a 2,000 word puff piece about how great he is and publish it in the New York Times.
> Unless of course, they quit their job and want to pay the New York Times to run the exact same article, word for word. This would now be a violation of campaign finance laws, because only reporters and editors are allowed to have opinions. If a private citizen has an opinion, he's trying to destroy the democratic process.
> Unless the non-reporter's name happens to be Bill Gates, in which case it becomes legal again. The Supreme Court has said that you can always spend money campaigning for yourself.
End result: Rich people can finance their own campaigns without any limits (see Ross Perot), but middle-class types are breaking the law if they buy ads endorsing a candidate they would like to see elected. That, and the First Amendment is flushed down the toilet.
I'd much rather deal with 'blog who make no pretense. I'll do my own fact checking rather than rely on unseen gnomes to do it to my satisfaction.
Wouldn't it be nice if politicians had to keep *real* daily logs. Like records of whom they met with, were bought a $200 luncheon from, and received $10,000 in 'contributions?'
Too bad the only ones they want to hold accountable are others...
No no no - we can't have the press meddling in important matters like presidential elections. The New York Times protected our democracy by stonewalling the Fitzgerald investigation into the White House leaking a CIA/WMD expert's identity. Which otherwise would have splashed lurid details of a White House indictment all over the pages. That might have influenced the election. My thanks to these guardians of liberty, standing up for our freedom from press tyranny. If only they could keep the irresponsible bloggers out of the sensitive business of political reporting, where only the most highly qualified corporations can be trusted to protect us from what we cannot stand to know.
--
make install -not war
This is great. Now where's my press card?
Does this mean I can write off my hosting and Movable Type?
In fact, free speech doesn't really apply to journalists. I'm speaking as someone who has worked in journalism for the past ten years. Let's say I hate Microsoft. As a journalist, if I wrote something like "Microsoft is crap and I'm not just saying that because Bill Gates likes to sleep with young boys and small furry animals" I would be in a load of trouble. Sure, it's an obvious joke, but Gates would have me dragged into court in less time than it took Windows98 to flash a BSOD. Now I could argue satire, but unless I got lucky and had a jury full of Mac addicts, I would probably lose.
The example doesn't even need to be that extreme. News organizations have been sued for defamatory stories about corporations, even though everything in their story was accurate. Once upon a time, journalists could rely on the truth as their defense. This is not always the case anymore. You can be sued for defamation even if the facts are on your side, and you will lose if the jury sides against you.
The only so-called journalists who come close to getting away with things like that are tabloids, and they're being sued left and right. They're losing, too.
Add to that the fact that most bloggers aren't affiliated with big corporations or other entities with loads of cash. Most of them are regular people, who couldn't afford to defend themselves in court even if they were 100% accurate with everything they wrote.
Of course, I haven't talked about political speech, which IS what this ruling is all about. However, if the government really starts treating blogs like other journalistic media, it will have to apply the same standards to all of them. At the very least, blogs could eventually be vulnerable to the same legal actions as traditional media.
I guess what worries me the most is this: As a journalist, I am not at all free to say whatever it is I want to say--nor should I be. Some stories are so heavily "lawyered" to avoid lawsuits, they read like a Microsoft EULA. Most of us couldn't afford to have a legal team on retainer to protect ourselves. Even if we could, what kind of "freedom" is that?
This is about money.
This is about money that the parties and candidates spend paying "bloggers" to write about how good they are.
The issue here is not free speach. It has been spun. The issue here is if someone is being paid to write something in a blog, then they should have to make that clear on the blog. There is a difference between an opinion piece and propaganda.
If 500 people all write in support of an issue and it turns out that they have been paid to all support that issue, it isn't really a grass roots support movement, is it?
This boils back down to the same issue as the gov. paying "journalists" to create fake news reports about certain issues.
I have no problem with parties and candidates paying people to write good things about them, I just want to know if what I am reading is someone's opinion or a campaign ad.
Yestrday I could not spell jurnalist, now I are one!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Why are you calling a "Draft Advisory Opinion" by a commission a "ruling"?
Effectively, libel is dead. If you, as a journalist, publish mean, false things about Bill Gates, a public figure, then you can only be found guilty of libel if it can be proved that you acted with 'actual malice'. See Sullivan v New York Times (1964). Historically, malice has been almost impossible to prove, and people have lost libel cases against parties who were proven to have published falsehoods against them, who were proven to have KNOWN those falshoods were false prior to publication, but by whom malice could not be proven. You are worrying for nothing, you can basically make any statements you would like about a public figure with impunity.
In soviet Cuba, Communists join YOU!
That so needed to be done.
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
That's easy. Low pay, bad hours, little job security, lots of crank phone calls, and predictable abuse from wingers of all stripes.
That's a really good point. If blogs have one great merit, it's that you don't need money to have one, so it's equal-opportunity. The amount of money spent on campaigns today really does shut out the little guy from most other routes of communication.
Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Is that different than when real journalists just re-hash everything from a press conference? Or when journalists pick and choose which expert testimony they want to go forward with if they have dissenting testimony?
Don't put journalists on a pedestal. The days where journalists did hard digging to get out the truth seems to be long gone, at least in this country. A blogger has just as much right to put their spin on the facts as the journalists that writes it in a paper.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Since when did the government get to decide what is and isn't free speech? It all is. Even if it deals with elections. It's nice that the FEC says that bloggers have free speech, but the fact of the matter is "so does everyone else". Fuck you FEC, for even thinking that you can regulate this sort of thing.
My other car is first.
Comment A: "I have worked at a newspaper, and spent all day calling people, attending government meetings, doing research and asking more questions before I wrote something."
Comment B: "Bloggers [...] At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others."
Er, um, weren't you just feeding on the facts told to you by the people you called, the meetings you attended, and the answers to questions you asked? You're an info scavenger!
Also, you're confusing "editorial commentary" with "hard news." Most bloggers are editorialists and are, by definition, offering their opinion on the events of the day. They research the issues and present their opinion.
You're just a j-school snob, and a pretty confused one at that.
"Oh wait, it's only "right-wing" views that have to be balanced."
If that's true, it's because only "right-wing" views exist. The old rule was that all polictical and controversial opinions had to be balanced. Now that the rule is gone, there only seems to be one view.
24 hour a day political harrangues do not constitute the presentation of political views anyway, it is propaganda, pure and simple. In other words, opposing views are censored.
One must wonder exactly who employs and scripts these carbon copy talk shows and their respective hosts.
Please see: http://www.serendipity.li/cda.html for some references to historical censorship in the United States.
Michael