This diary is a response to Markos'
Kaine/Gilliard post and
Armando's justification of the same.
I respectfully, and wholeheartedly, disagree. And because this disagreement has some bearing on how we deal with political ads on blogs and political campaigns in 2006 I feel compelled to write a diary.
We bloggers are:
- publishers
- editors
- authors
- partisans
- news/feedback junkies
all rolled into one. And that's on a good day.
That same "mix" of roles, which makes for the cool immediacy of the blogs...the minimal barriers between thought and publication...gets stretched to the breaking point when what happens on the blogs really matters outside of the little world of our computer screens.
Part of the disagreements I've had here on dKos have been based on asking questions about what kind of standards we apply to ourselves precisely in that context: when what we do matters to the outside world.
Since I believe that what we do on the blogs, in some ways, does matter. I'd like to take that topic up again now.
Steve Gilliard made a crucial error in writing
this post.
Let me explain.
Tim Kaine's campaign had purchased a month-long blog ad on Steve Gilliard's blog: The News Blog. Steve was not alone. The Kaine campaign purchased ads on a great number of political blogs...presumably raising money and awareness...a "win-win" for candidate and bloggers.
To purshase a blog ad you go to a screen that looks like this. This is a standard "blog ad" screen. It explains the rules and terms to advertisers, including this proviso:
All ads are subject to publisher's approval. If the ad is rejected, your money will be refunded via Paypal.
It also explains the rules for "publishers" ie. bloggers. I won't go into it, but it can be summed up by saying "blog ads" provides a service, but that, on some level, most of the business relationship is between the advertiser and the blogger/publisher. Further, the advertiser is the one who takes "the risk."
The Kaine campaign, like all advertisers, in purchasing an ad on Steve's blog was paying for access to Steve's audience, not necessarily endorsing Steve's content, or seeking favorable writing from Steve. The Kaine campaign had a responsibility to suss out the content and audience on Steve's site and decide if the situation really was a "win-win". They went for it.
Now, as I understand it, well into this process, the Kaine campaign realized it wasn't "win-win" anymore. Steve had put up content that the Kaine campaign didn't want to be associated with. So they sent Steve an email seeking to pull the ad. It was short and sweet:
"Please remove all advertising for Kaine for Governor from News Blog (http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/) immediately."
In doing this, the Kaine campaign was writing to Steve as the PUBLISHER of "the News Blog" and asking, simply, that he remove the ad. It was an ad the Kaine campaign had paid for, but that they no longer wanted associated with content that Steve, as the AUTHOR of the News Blog, had put up on his site.
That seems fair enough to me. The Kaine campaign made an assessment that it was no longer "win-win" to have the ad up and asked, just as Steve had a right to refuse their ad in the first place, that Steve take their ad down off his site, if possible, posthaste.
That's the crux of the matter. Clearly, the Kaine campaign messed up in the first place by not judging accurately whether Steve's blog was a "good fit." Hell, Steve could have been on vacation for two weeks in Tahiti with no internet access...and the ad would simply have stayed up. You presume the Kaine folks would have thought of that possibility; but the blogs are relatively new. Cut them a break.
What I think is most relevant to all of us here on the blogs is Steve's response. In response to all this, Steve wrote the post that Markos front-paged: "Tim Kaine is a Coward". It featured a huge photo of Kaine, with the caption:
Coward. Black people should shut their mouths
ie. The Publisher, Steve Gilliard, who had entered into a contract with the Kaine campaign, instead of saying..."no harm, no foul" and pulling the ad of an unsatisfied customer and leaving it at that...instead, as the Editor and Author of his blog, attacked Kaine like he was his greatest political enemy, and on the front page of his blog. Not only that, but he did so in the last stages of Kaine's campaign when "bad press" is a significant factor in determining the outcome of an election.
Nothing Kaine did hurt Steve Gilliard the publisher or author. Nothing.
Like all publishers who lose an advertising client, Steve still had the ad revenue and the freedom to find another advertiser. He still had the freedom to run his blog as he wished. The Kaine campaign kept this a private matter.
Everything Steve did in response to the Kaine campaign's request, however, was calculated to hurt his own customer. His response was deeply unethical and had the effect of shooting himself, and the blogs, in the foot.
The way Steve wrote that story and published it as his first response to the Kaine campaign, the way he maligned Kaine personally, the way he published private business correspondence, the way Steve, like Armando does in his post, conflated the "content" of his blog and his "blog battles" with Kaine's campaign, (especially when the Kaine folks were seeking the exact opposite) just breaks every publishing rule in the book. That was unethical and just plain unwise. It reads like taking revenge.
Further, the fact that kos frontpaged Steve's story favorably for the very broad readership of dailykos, represents a huge error in judgment. Not a tiny error. A huge error. Markos, in my view, and with all due respect, took a bad situation and made it worse. Any group of editors would have told both Steve and Markos that their stories were "bad news" and had no place as leading stories on their blogs. Any business person would question their sanity.
You see, it's one thing for an advertiser to take a risk that the content of a given blog may change over the course of an ad run. Advertisers do that every day. No one knows what the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times stories will be three days hence...and so booking an ad entails some vulnerability. Motion picture companies, Broadway shows and restaurants can't expect favorable reviews from the newspapers they advertise in. (though they do all sorts of sneaky things to get them) Advertising in a "free press environment" entails some jeopardy, some risk.
It was clearly the responsiblity of the Kaine campaign to weigh those risks for themselves. And, yes, that's Markos' point, it's a valid one.
But for a "publisher" to then turn the front page of a publication over to an attack on the character of an advertiser after the relationship went sour is simply outright wrong. And for Markos, someone who receives similar and significant amounts of paid political advertising, to endorse that piece and the conduct involved, not recognizing the significance of the situation and magnifying that attack in the process, only compounds the first mistake. Those two actions put in jeopardy a great deal of hard work by a broad range of people, not least of which the very hard work of Markos and Steve themselves.
The basic equation is simple (Updated: see footnote below):
Is it okay for a blogger to personally attack a political advertiser, or any advertiser, for pulling an ad, however disgruntled they feel? No. Not if you accepted the ad in the first place. Not during the course of a campaign, or while the ad buy is still "on". Especially not at the very end of a political campaign.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
I'd like to reiterate something I've been saying for awhile. It's time for the blogs to grow up. We can't have it all ways.
I'd like to make a very direct note to all "blog parties" involved in this. Imho, you need to take a step back and see yourselves not as aggrieved parties...using the language of how you've been "hurt" by this, or "attacked" over this...and maybe take a look in the mirror and think about how your actions impact other people. How the multiple roles and the growing popularity of blog publishing imply new and very real responsibilities, and even, gasp, rules of conduct.
A whole bunch of people are going to be impacted by the outcome of Tim Kaine's election, and we on the blogs just did all of those people a disservice. Big time. We became the story...in a bad way. We did every net roots Kaine volunteer a disservice too.
Personally, I have suggested for a good long time that some kind of editorial ground rules need to get laid down on the big blogs. Given today's fiasco, I stand by my point. We need to think about this.
People make rules and create "best practices" when the consequences of not having rules and "best practices" costs us: ie. when we pay the price for not having them. If you ask me, for the blogs, that time is now.
Footnote: Okay, I'm seeing that "simple" was a bad word choice. As I imply, there has to be a way for blogs, like print and TV media, to freely criticize advertisers, and publish stories that relate to them and their industries, period. Especially politicians.
Further, the paragraph that talks about "personally attacking" advertisers first read:
Is it okay for a blogger to personally attack a political advertiser, or any advertiser however disgruntled they feel? No.
It now reads, expressing my intended meaning:
Is it okay for a blogger to personally attack a political advertiser, or any advertiser, for pulling an ad, however disgruntled they feel? No.