Certainly there's something here to say about blogging and its increase use, but there's also something to say about the visibility of campaigns and campaigning and how they use the tool. Just as the McCain-Feingold was to bring visibility to the campaign finances, there should be some mechanism (one would hope internal ethics would do the case) that would shed some visibility on this new tool and how it's used in campaigns.
The goal of the paid bloggers, both campaigns say, is to deluge online political journals with positive tidbits about their candidate and draw attention to the most negative news about their opponent. The campaign bloggers sometimes write their own bits. Other times, they spread gossip generated by others.I don't have a problem with that sort of blog, but I do have a problem when that blog is being produced by someone who is on a candidate's payroll.
2 comments:
Why?
You are not alone at finding this icky. But it is not clear to me why you or others think it is icky.
Most of our campaign (finance) laws have to do with finding out where the money is coming from, in atempt to limit influence peddling.
But blogging is cheap, nearly a free form of (political) communication. It is not being supported by a brownbag stuffed with cash.
On the index of ickiness, paid blogging by candidates has to be pretty low.
It's not that I'm upset that bloggers are being paid. What irks me is that they are being paid and then are not disclosing such facts to their readership.
I think that's dishonest on the part of the blogger, but I think it's also dishonest on the part of the campaign -- isn't honesty and trust key pillars that we look for in candidates (even though we know we probably won't get them)?
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