In light of the recent discovery of a congressional candidate posting under a second UID to trash her state party and the national party, I have to ask: What are blogge ethics? This question is incredibly important to me because I want to support some of my favorite local candidates by establishing them on DailyKos and in the netroots, but I don't want to violate our community values. See the full discussion below the fold.
I believe in the netroots. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. That much is obvious. I believe that the netroots can help get Democrats elected to office, if we get our candidates involved and we get involved in our local communities. To that end, I will hopefully be starting to intern with one of our candidates soon. I will refrain from saying which candidate because I have not started working with them yet, and do not what to involve them in a discussion they are not aware of at all.
The problem comes from how should I establish them on dKos. My first inclination is to establish a new UID, John Doe for Arizona, except with the appropriate specifics. However, in light of a certain candidate's foray into questionable on-line ethics as exposed by Kagro X here, I am not sure that is the best course of action. I would most likely be preparing and posting the candidate's diaries, as well as material for their own website as an intern. The question becomes, what should I do with my own UID? I wouldn't even begin to know how to resign my UID, and I'm not prepared to go GBCW. So should I stop posting on my own UID?
One thing I feel is that I definitely should not use my personal UID to promote my candidate's UID, either through comments or mojo. To me, that is the classical reason why users are discouraged from setting up more than one ID. However, I do support more than one candidate, especially my state representatives and city council candidates. I would like to keep blogging in support of them and of my own efforts to explore local government. So what should I do?
Another interesting dimension is the idea of a staff blogger. The idea of a staff blogger is now well established and entrenched in many campaigns. But what form should that take? Is it wrong for a staffer to post on a candidate's website on behalf of the candidate? How is that different from a staffer writing a position paper or press release? Many candidates employ professional speechwriters, but what if a staffer posts as that candidate on dKos? Does it matter if that staffer is paid or unpaid?
I have seen three models so far. There is obviously the ethically impaired model, which I've already linked to in this diary. The second is having staffers post diaries and videos under their own UIDs, with full disclosure of their relation to the campaign. I have seen this several times with Presidential primary diaries. The third is that of Eric Massa, who posts under his own UID. I respect this model, but if the UID says the candidate's name, should it always be the candidate posting?
I know some will refer me to the FAQ and user guidelines, but we need more than just a single document. We need a discussion of what is appropriate and what is ethical.