Just wrote a letter to the WSJ. Figured I'd stick it up here. (Below the fold.)
Dear WSJ:
You people wrote and published an inaccurate article on Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, and you should retract it.
The Moulitsas/Armstrong and Armstrong Williams cases are absolutely different in kind.
- Armstrong Williams accepted taxpayer money. He was paid by the Department of Education. Moulitsas/Armstrong did not. Moulitsas/Armstrong took money from the Dean primary campaign. That, by definition, is not taxpayer money.
- Armstrong Williams continued to be a mainstream pundit while he was accepting taxpayer money. He continued to write newspaper columns and appear on TV. He did not at any time disclose his "arrangement" with DoE. As I understand it, Moulitsas/Armstrong had a political consulting firm together. The firm is technically what got hired by the Dean campaign. Moulitsas has stated that the Dean campaign barely listened to his ideas, and Armstrong did most of the work. During that time, there was a prominent disclaimer at the very top of dailykos.com. MyDD.com (Armstrong's site) did not exist the entire time Armstrong worked there (in fact, MyDD.com's hiatus lasted quite a bit longer than Armstrong's tenure with Dean For America did).
- Armstrong Williams was hired to promote a specific policy agenda. He was being paid specifically to say nice things about No Child Left Behind. Moulitsas/Armstrong were hired to provide technical advice, not to promote a candidate or policy. They assisted in getting the official Dean website (deanforamerica.com) off the ground. DFA was very successful and played a large part in making Howard Dean's primary campaign into the Internet phenomenon that it was. Moulitsas/Armstrong were NOT hired to say nice things about Howard Dean on their blogs (one of which was small at the time and the other was not running). Armstrong had totally ceased blogging, and Moulitsas, disclaimer and all, continued to write what he thought about Dean, whether positive or negative (and there was plenty of both). Having been an avid reader of his site for some time now (including before and during the events in question) I do not believe that the DFA money made Moulitsas write in a more favorable fashion towards Howard Dean. The wars between dailykos.com users who were partisans of one primary candidate or another got pretty heated, but Kos didn't get involved in those threads to defend Dean.
- Armstrong Williams was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Moulitsas/Armstrong received $3,000 a month. At four months' employment, that's $12,000 ($24,000 if they were getting paid separately, I don't know). Let me reiterate again that Armstrong Williams was paid with taxpayer money. There are potentially CRIMINAL STATUTES that are involved with the paying of government money to a journalist to promote a particular policy initiative. Moulitsas/Armstrong certainly did not break any laws, and I don't believe what they did was even unethical.
I recall at the time that Moulitsas' involvement in the Dean campaign was remarked upon all over the Internet. He himself posted it when he got hired. It wasn't a big secret. I'm sure Armstrong would have posted about it too, had his blog been running. Nobody was angry about it at the time. Nobody who was angry about it NOW was angry THEN. But now all of a sudden this is some huge controversy, conveniently at a time when the Bush Administration is getting in trouble over Armstrong Williams.
Say, the Wall Street Journal isn't taking money from the Bushies and not telling us....right?
I am asking you to retract or correct or apologize for the story by Bulkeley and Bandler. Also, Laura Gross of DFA was interviewed by your Jeanne Cummings. Gross claims that Bulkeley and Bandler used an off-the-record quote in a misleading way. So there may be some unethical behavior at the WSJ that we should know about. Something tells me that story will run (if at all) in the very back pages.
Not very respectfully yours (in light of your "journalism"),
xxxxx
(I even included my real name and address)