Posted on 03/13/2005 10:55:40 PM PST by elhombrelibre
Blogs.
The very word elicits tension. Or so it seemed at the recent Politics Online Conference 2005, put on last week by the Institute for Democracy & the Internet at the George Washington University. A breakout session titled "Tracking the Buzz through Blogs" demonstrated the intense emotionalism embedded in this new medium, as well as the intellect and diversity of sanity among the men and women (but mostly men) behind the keyboards.
The session's panelists were sane enough: Peter Daou, formerly of the Kerry-Edward campaign, now of the Daou Report, Patrick Ruffini, webmaster for Bush-Cheney '04, Nicco Mele formerly of the Dean campaign, and Ken Deutsch from Issue Dynamics, Inc. Each gave a cogent defense of the medium and discussed its virtues and limitations, with minor polite disagreements peppered throughout their remarks. Mercilessly, each eschewed any political speechifying and treated one another with professional respect.
But during the Q&A, the crowd collectively obsessed about whether bloggers ought to be treated as journalists or not. The controversy stems from a district court judge's recent order that the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) take up the matter of certain loopholes in the so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which allow for relatively unregulated Internet speech. Bloggers and First Amendment enthusiasts are exercised over the proposition that the federal government might begin to regulate blogs.
The panelists took a generally libertarian view of the question. Let people decide whom to believe, seemed to be the consensus. Trust is king in the blogosphere. Fakers, posers and con artists won't last long. Many attendees, however, were unsatisfied.
"But what about all these anonymous bloggers?" an attendee demanded.
"I know of a case where a guy was posing as 'Libertarian Girl' and he's really a 50-year-old man," offered another.
"I think blogs are dead," piped one surly attendee.
The general response to each of these utterances, and many more like them, was: so what? If you don't like blogs don't read them. The beauty of blogs is in the unfettered way in which they facilitate our First Amendment right. And whether you like it or not, that Amendment protects a blogger's right to be anonymous. And an idiot.
One fellow chose to test the strength of that last assertion. Somehow the subject of Fox News came up and one bloated, goateed attendee went into a frenzy. Snarl-faced and glassy-eyed, he declared, "Fox News isn't journalism! It's a direct arm of the Republican National Committee! They meet with the Republican National Committee every morning!" Even Nicco from the Dean campaign looked uncomfortable.
Turns out the fellow was a blogger with "The Raw Story," a vehemently pro-homosexual blog and webzine, which specializes in "outing" Republican members of Congress. While not a member of the panel, he took it upon himself to insert his opinion on just about everything discussed or mumbled by anyone in the room.
"If you're a rightwinger, you are a fascist," he vociferated to no one in particular.
"I'm a rightwinger," I responded. "Am I a fascist?"
"Pretty much."
It dawned on me: this clown's free speech was more of a nuisance in this, a public setting than in electronic form on his blog. At least when it's on his blog, I need neither to hear nor read it.
Garance Franke-Ruta from the American Prospect suggested out loud that the blogging industry impose "community norms" to prevent libelous postings, like the ones recently revealed to be the handwork of Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich staffer Joseph Steffen, which cruelly implied Baltimore Mayor (and potential Ehrlich rival) Martin O'Malley was unfaithful to his wife. (Steffen's comments, I should point out, were posted on the aptly named Free Republic, which is not a blog, per se, but a message board.)
I spoke to Franke-Ruta after the session and her concerns are well intentioned. But politicians ought to have no more protections from salacious blog posts than they do from sandwich boards. In the end, the government should no more do anything about them than John Adams should have imposed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.
Blogs don't libel people. People libel people.
Patrick Hynes is a Republican consultant and a freelance writer. He is the proprietor of the site AnkleBitingPundits.com.
More whistling past the graveyard by the Legacy Media.
First of all, disclosure, I am a blogger.
But, I always think it is funny that people think that John Adams so went against the prevailing opinions of the day to create the Alien and Sedition acts. Guess what guys? EVERY state in the union had the VERY same laws in their states. What Jefferson's adherents disliked was that it was to become a Federalized law.
They had NO problem with such laws in their own states at all and many of them used them often.
Anyway, the more voices we have out there the better. We all know that the Main Stream Media has failed to inform us. Its time we took things into our own hands again. Tomas Paine lives and he is ME (and every blogger)!
read later bump
Months ago during Rathergate I was chided for suggesting that Freepers refer to this place by its correct term, a conservative news forum or simply "forum" because "blog" is an unflattering term that would be used by the media to portray FR in a bad light. The notion of a blog is that of an unstructured free-for-all like an electronic bathroom stall. Slashdot is another example of a themed forum. If the mainstream media are reminded of this whenever they call FR a "blog", they might get the message. Might take some time though seeing how they still refer to fanatical murdering thugs as "insurgents".
LOL, I noticed he used "clown" without the more descriptive and acurrate prefix attached!
classeygreeneyedgirl was a 50 something man,DeepInTheHuntingForest was NOT in the military and never had been,snowbunny was NOT a young,voluptuous woman and stole her profile from from many other people who actually did what she had calimed to have done,but didn't, and there've many more.
FREEPERS aren't "bloggers"; though some do have their own blogs. But it WAS FREEPERS who were the first to call Dan Rather on that fraudulent memo and many other things,over the years, as well.
In any case, it is a good thing. No matter what the "big media" says, this is part of our freedom of expression. Junst because some people don't like it, too bad for them.
Why don't the MSNM crawl back into the horse piss they call news, and leave the rest of us Americans to do what the hell we want too. Sue me if I injure someone, and then at least I will have my day in a Court of Law, and no on some stupid tv program with a bunch of communist brain storming about the ole days when they controlled the news in America.
Blog until you drop!
Sounds good to me.
This forum beats a blog, cause you can really talk to people...mostly!
Or we can shout at each other. :-)
classeygreeneyedgirl was a 50 something man,DeepInTheHuntingForest was NOT in the military and never had been,snowbunny was NOT a young,voluptuous woman and stole her profile from from many other people who actually did what she had calimed to have done,but didn't, and there've many more.
Ok, I have to come clean with you folks. I'm really a liberal who likes to complicate issues, because the reality is that I don't like to think logically. Nuance is where it's at, and nothing is black and white.
/sarcasm
My chief question is: does one truly need a journalism degree to ask questions and read the news on radio or tv? If that is the case, I weep for the continual reliance of the blue staters on NPR, for example, and I cheer that we are making a difference by expressing ourselves and exposing what journalists are not.
No, you don't need a journalism degree, but you should have some sense of how news is organized, as in writing a lead sentence, constructing the facts in an interesting and factual manner and answering the who, what, when, where, why and how, within the first few paragraphs. It also helps to speak clearly and to not be unsightly. Any one of us can find the facts, but we need to be able to convey those facts in a concise and clear manner.
The media refuses to acknowledge any difference between blogs, message board forums, chatrooms & e-mail.
And I don't really want people to justshutupandtakeit. Well most people anyway.
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