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Rapid Response for Illinois based on an editorial in today's Chicago Tribune. Please respond if you are able/willing/interested.
Let blogs run free
Chicago Tribune
EDITORIAL
April 23, 2005
http://tinyurl.com/duaya
(sub./reg. required)
Nevertheless, questions have been raised about whether bloggers are making an end run around campaign finance laws. Should a blogger's online endorsement and promotion of a candidate be counted as an "in-kind contribution" to the campaign? Should the blogger be subject to campaign finance law if he's raising money? Are these journalists or political activists?
That last question erupted with a vengeance after revelations that South Dakota Republican John Thune's Senate campaign paid two bloggers who posted attacks against Thune's Democratic opponent, Tom Daschle. Howard Dean's presidential campaign paid two blogs for (presumably) unrelated consulting services.
Update [2005-4-24 13:45:51 by thesill]: Corrected bad copy + paste. 4/24/05
* THE FACTS *
While this Tribune editorial's support for the 1st Amendment and active democracy in general is well worth our support... they've smudged a vital point:
"Howard Dean's presidential campaign paid two blogs for (presumably) unrelated consulting services."
- Not "presumably", the information is all right there at www.DailyKos.com and www.MyDD.com. If the Tribune were a real newspaper they could've, umm, looked it up at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/14/02014/6287 -- unrelated is unrelated is unrelated.
- Kos and MyDD (Jerome Armstrong) both described in full detail on their blogs what they were being paid for. They made everything public info by disclosing it and being honest. The Thune bloggers did no such thing and tried to keep it a secret until an investigative reporter did, well, an investigation of Thune's finances.
- Jerome Armstrong even STOPPED BLOGGING at MyDD while he was being paid by the Dean campaign.
- Kos and Armstrong never did anything surreptitious against Howard Dean's opponents, unlike the stealth Thune bloggers who were paid much more, were later found to have been clearly influenced in their political writing by said payments, and did not close their relationship to Thune until after they were found out (well after the November election).
- The right-wing Tribune's attempt to compare Thune's stealth bloggers to Kos and MyDD is an ill-conceived attempt at "balanced reportage" by somehow trying to line up the conservative bloggers' sneakiness with the progressive bloggers' forthrightness.
MORE INFO:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/14/02014/6287
* ACTION *
Send as many brief, succinct letters to the Trib as you can. Forward this alert to friends. They've jumped off a cliff by misreporting and smudging the truth to [fit] their conservative shilling purposes.
ctc-TribLetter@Tribune.com
or http://tinyurl.com/d4hwu
and under separate email send your letter to:
R. Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor
bdold@tribune.com
Let them know they've messed up and we won't stand for it.
Include full name, address and phone.