January 15, 2005
More Right Wing Dishonesty (Will it ever stop?)
Via Instapundit, we learn that Bill O'Reilly and the Wall Street Journal are up in arms that Daily Kos and MyDD were "taking money" from the Dean campaign. From this segment between Hugh Hewitt and O'Reilly
BILL O'REILLY [FOX NEWS]: You know, I think this is just the beginning of this. This is like the 50s, when DJs were being paid to play records on the radio. You're going to see more and more of this kind of stuff, where political campaigns and people like that are buying quasi-journalists, bloggers, radio people, for good publicity. Do you disagree?
HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.
O'REILLY: Aw, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.
As it turns out, Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) was actually on a blogging hiatus throughout the primary season--something Zephy Teachout should have noted in her original post. As for for Daily Kos, was anyone who read him him during the primary season not aware that he was consulting for Dean?
I guess the question is whether Kos was trying to be an "objective" journalist. I would be interested in what others think about this. IMHO, there wasn't any ambiguity if you read the site often enough--Kos was and is no journalist. Kos himself has said as much. But I suppose occasional visitors might have gotten the wrong impression, since Kos did occasionally criticise Dean and praise other candidates (especially Clark). In any case, Faux certainly isn't interested in uncovering the truth. To its credit, WSJ did check the facts. But once they had them, shouldn't they have realized attacking Markos on "blogging ethics" was a non-story? The same goes for Instapundit, who has emphasized the story, even though he admits Kos did nothing wrong.
I agree the whole thing is overblown and forcing an issue, but the last bit about Kos not being a journalist...that sounds like Barkley's "I am not a role model" argument. Saying something doesn't make it so. Kos is responsible for his readers and duty bound to the truth. Impropriety is impropriety, he needs to be careful (this last statement is just advice, not accusation).
Kos is no journalist. He's not even really an opinion blogger the way Atrios or Sullivan are. He is an candidate activist and his site is base of operation for the organization of his activism. And Kos disclosed he was on the Dean payroll quite clearly.
With that said the reason that this was a story is that Teachout's comments seemed to imply that there was some sort of understanding that the money was given in exchange for positive press on DailyKos as opposed to Kos' campaigning expertise. Given Kos' great influence among the progressive grassroots (and especially his ability to raise funds) he does have an obligation not to tout a candidate people for money. When he gets behind a candidate he has the trust of his readers that he does so b/c he honestly believes that they are ideologically good candidates with a realistic chance of winning.
But as I look more at the story it seems pretty clear that Kos was never given explicit or even implicit instructions to "talk Dean up" and that Kos never understood that to be his role. It was just something that Dean campaign hoped would come about as a result of putting him on the payroll. (And if I may be snarky for a moment, I don't think they got their money's worth.)
Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum both make the point that Kos did not know that was why he was on their payroll. Trippi paid him and Armstrong to be consultants, not PR operatives.
This seems pretty ambiguous as to who's right and who's wrong, but one this that's indisputable is how amazing it is that this is even a story - Fox news is taking time out to blast bloggers for being on the take? They must be really scared of something.
Yeah, it's hard to say--is Kos an opinion blogger or a canidate activist? Somewhere in between, it seems. These days, it's almost like an organization--sometimes members vote on which candidate to support financially. Your comparison with Atrios is also instructive--Atrios never even endorsed a primary candidate. In any case, Kos certainly doesn't make a commitment to journalistic objectivity, although his readers expect him to tell the truth.
If the consulting gig helped sway Kos' loyalty (and it's hard to imagine it didn't), I'd say they got their money's worth. That site was booming during the primaries--it became a kind of emotional haven for Dean supporters.
They must be really scared of something.
Scared? Aren't you being a tad too hopeful? Seriously though, I don't think they are scared. Just desperate to do some moral equivocation with the Armstrong Williams story. (And I think anyone trying to be halfway objective realizes that even putting Kos in the worst light, the Williams thing is much worse.)