Just a quick note about Steve Clemons, Daniel Glover, and blogger ethics. There's a discussion right now on the distinctions between a journalist, a partisan, and a politician. Steve and Daniel have each laid out thoughtful posts on the nature of the problems these mixed identities cause. If you'll forgive the self-indulgence of writing about blogging, yet again, I'd like to explain why I keep coming back to this medium. Blogging and its linking patterns is a sketch of an entirely different organizational model, and represents some shards of a blueprint of a 21st century progressive America. Our system doesn't work anymore. I believe Steve knows this, and I believe he also knows that we have to find new ways of building consensus, aligning interests, and forcing adherence to a prudent and flexible set of rules and norms. So blogger ethics discussions aren't so much about blogger ethics as they are discussion about what an internet-based society might look like.
Eric Alterman is claiming that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't, in fact, for some time.
At a recent conference on the Clinton Administration at Hofstra University, ex-press secretary Jake Siewart made a point that had previously eluded me: It was during the early days of Clinton's presidency that the democratization of instant information made the insider press corps obsolete. To retain their importance and self-regard, these journalists had to invent a new function for themselves, and they did: interpreting, not reporting, the news. But instead of doing the hard work of researching the historical, economic, sociological and political contexts of a given story and then finding a way to explain these in lay terms, they preferred to rely on what came most easily to them: cocktail party gossip, green room small talk, semiofficial leaks and unconfirmed rumor, almost always offered up as if the source had no interest in pushing a point of view.
Digby documents another example of unaccountable behavior on the part of media elites, and Atrios another. But the list really is endless. Remove the printing press as a barrier to entry, and what can happen is a social barrier to entry, the creation of the pundit class. That's certainly part of the story, and it is definitely something that I would like to see Daniel Glover and Steve Clemons address. They will, I'm sure, in time. David Broder actually wrote, years before punditry emerged, that there was a danger of mixing the line between journalist and politician due to the allure of TV celebrity. Nothing illustrates such a danger better than Bob Novak. He originates information, but is he really about educating the public, or is there another agenda in there? It's hard to tell.
Regardless, what I'm pointing at is that it is far too easy to discuss the deep ethical fissures in our society and culture as belonging to some small and otherized group such as 'liberal bloggers' or 'conservative bloggers'. The fake distinction between bloggers and the MSM is another cheap framework. They are not us, because we are MSM, therefore none of their ethical dilemmas apply to us, right? Or, we are not MSM, therefore we do not have to live by a set of arbitrary ethical principles. I believe these frameworks are driving much of the tension here, and crafting pointless defensiveness. I certainly resent Tim Russert or Chris Matthews taking speaking fees and having no system for transparency; that is in no way responsible of NBC. And it is quite discouraging to then have my ethical choices scrutinized by those who will not openly assess those of their colleagues. Nonetheless, it is important to discuss ethical issues in and of themselves, because ethics carry power. And that is why I like what Steve wrote, and I respect Glover's search.
But what does this have to do with whether bloggers are activists or journalists, and distance between them and politicians. Well, I believe that ethical structures on the internet are at this point quite fluid. At some points, distance between subjects covered is required. At other points, it is not. But it is impossible, I believe to work through questions of ethics on blogger conference calls without bringing the blast faxes to the rooms of pundits that the RNC engages in consistently and effectively (and that the DNC would if they could), or the constant and consistent manipulation of existing media channels that goes on from political actors. It becomes simply an incomplete discussion that frames the issue to immediately put one group or the other on the defensive. Steve also brings up legal issues, and implies that bloggers will be regulated by the FEC if they become party mouthpieces. Latent in this concern is the issue of revenue. Who pays for you to speak? Are you influenced by this payment? Does it matter? Is your speech precluding others' speech, as it does on a limited bandwidth medium like television? What is the nature of citizens, money, and political influence?
I'm going to step back and take a systemic view. The diversity of blogs and low barrier to entry mitigate many of the concerns that Steve discusses. Blogs that are echo chambers only do not generate outward pressure; even large ones can temporarily become vessels for others' content. Blogs as a whole present a different editorial system, and that composite editorial system means that any individual blogger might need to less clearly define his relationship to his source and more clearly increate his/her relationship with his readership/community. In a sense, bloggers might originate information and do journalism, but they are also community leaders. And communities have political interests, and in some sense you could even argue that it is the responsibility of the blogger to represent those interests, and that might mean becoming a shill for a particular politician (a disabled issues blog pushing people to organize on behalf of a good candidate, for instance). A failure to do that could clearly become an ethical problem in and of itself, stacked up against the need for distance.
Anyway, I guess this post became longer than I intended, it's just food for thought.
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