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Archive for the 'Asymmetrical Media' Category

Toward a RedState/Human Events YouTube Debate

Published by William Beutler on December 2, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, CNN, Cable News, Daily Kos, Debates, Elections, Fred Thompson, Google, Hillary Clinton, MSM vs. Blogs, National Politics, New Media Strategies, Online Campaigns, RedState, Republicans, Technology and White House '08. 2 Comments

RedState and Human Events would do a better job than CNN and YouTube

On Thursday I gave a somewhat-impulsive thumbs-up to RedState’s call for CNN to sack their political director. National Review’s indispensible Jim Geraghty has outlined eight editorial oversights (four quite serious, four merely problematic) in CNN’s vetting of the televised questioners. One or two would be enough to generate a blogswarm, but eight looks like malicious negligence, and it subseqently became a full-fledged blogstorm. Worse, CNN’s statement didn’t even attempt to be a “non-apology apology” — they’re digging in their heels and claiming:

The issues raised during last night’s debate were legitimate and relevant no matter who was asking the questions. The vested interests who are challenging the credibility of the questioners are trying to distract voters from the substantive issues they care most about.

Did somebody say “fake but accurate”? As QandO’s McQ notes, the hubris implicit in that statement is galling:

Says who? Says CNN, that’s who. It is the network that chose the questions that would be aired. Consequently what aired had nothing to do with what voters found to be the substantive issues of the day, but instead had everything to do with — say it with me — what CNN decided were the substantive issues of the day.

I stand by my initial judgement — in fact, I am all the more sure of it — but I realize it isn’t going to happen. (FWIW, CNN’s political director is Sam Feist; one wonders if indie rock/iPod Nano darling Feist could do any worse). And the truth is it wouldn’t make up for the debacle, so I concede that a change is not imperative. What would be better is a pro-active solution — that is, another debate. And so I am very intrigued by a new proposal, this time issued jointly by RedState and Human Events (both subsidiaries of Eagle Pubishing), for a “do-over debate”:

We have a base of readers who represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party. You — and the Republican Party — deserve to face the questions posed by undecided Republicans, not Democratic activists. We will solicit and obtain YouTube videos from those people and vet each questioner to establish that they are — really — undecided Republicans. We hope to include soldiers in the field in Iraq, Young Republicans, and others who still have not decided among you.

Today, allow us to make you this offer: We will organize a debate at a time and date amenable to you all. We will work with a national broadcaster to broadcast the debate as well as offer it online. We, not the liberal drive by media, will ensure the questioners are who they say they are. And we will choose them based on criteria that will be fully disclosed to you all which ensure the questioners aren’t activists for any Democratic candidate.

I think this is a terrific idea. The MSM no longer has a monopoly on campaign coverage, so why should they have a monopoly over organizing candidate debates? The only good answer is because they control the airwaves. Could Fox News be persuaded to air it? Possibly. C-SPAN would certainly set up a camera, it could be simulcast on the web, and it would obviously be made available on YouTube. Heck, put it on the History Channel. I bet more people would watch it.

And if so desired, Google/YouTube (GooTube, if you will) need not formally be involved. Eagle’s online outlets could independently create a YouTube account, put RedState’s Erick Erickson and Human Events’ Jed Babbin in a short video soliciting questions, and anyone could post their videos as responses. Eagle could narrow them down, submit them to a hand-picked group of conservative bloggers to identify the best, and blog readers would be invited to vet the questions themselves. The ultimate decisions should still be made by the organizing consortium, but the crowdsourcing would be a substantial (if not bulletproof) way to head off complaints from conservatives. Necessarily, this would aso give the campaigns time to study the questions and prepare well-thought out answers — this too would be different from the “gotcha” element that annoyed so many in the CNN/YouTube debate.

Of course, the last point hints at the major reason why it wouldn’t happen. Here I’ll note: I cannot formally join the call for such a debate; as I point out whenever relevant, New Media Strategies consults for the Fred Thompson campaign, and I won’t put the campaign or my employer on the spot. Same goes for the other campaigns, though — the Iowa caucuses are now a month away and no campaign should be pressured to join a debate in a time frame this limited. The CNN/YouTube debate required months, not to mention a “Save the Debate” movement by Republican bloggers, to happen at all. So don’t hold your breath, and save your Facebook campaigns. But it’s a terrific idea.

To address another issue: A few commenters on the above-mentioned post here, including some friends of Blog P.I., apparently read my criticism of the debate as a complaint about tough questions. If I understand them correctly, they feared a not-yet-proposed alternative would result in “softball” questions. I replied that they were mistaken, and pointed to a prediction by Patterico following the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate in July:

The Democrat debate was dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?” And the Republican debate will be dominated by questioners asking: “Why can’t you be more leftist?”

That pretty much nailed it. The problem is not that the issues CNN is so pleased with itself for raising were illegitimate or unfair. They were not. It’s that those Dem-leaning questions asked by Dem-leaning YouTubers were general election questions, and the general election audience generally (as it were) was not watching. Certainly Republicans should keep an eye toward next November, but a debate for a Republican primary should focus on issues that matter to Republicans. Say what you will, but “don’t ask, don’t tell” just isn’t one of them, and it doesn’t help Republican voters make up their minds. It does no good when Google flies a publicly-identifiable Hillary Clinton supporter in to berate the candidates about their position on the issue. (One which, I would like to point out, is unlikely to be a major factor in the general, either.) In fact, it rises to the level of farce when Anderson Cooper asks said Hillary supporter to rule on whether or not the candidates answered his question and the guy says “no,” yet anyone who was paying attention knows they did answer his question honestly, but he just didn’t like their answers.

True, CNN did air questions about illegal immigration, gun rights and religion. But RedState/Human Events would query those subjects, too. They might even include a question about the Bible that doesn’t conform to slack-jawed yokel stereotypes (sorry, Joseph Dearing, whomever you are, but when you assert that your question tells us “everything we need to know” about the GOP hopefuls, that’s how you come across). Although various writers at RedState and Human Events have evinced support for various candidates (Erickson most notably in favor of Fred Thompson, I can’t help but note), I would argue they have a greater interest than CNN in a strong, fair debate that includes difficult questions for all the candidates, because (as Erickson and Babbin point out) it’s their audience who will be deciding which Republican goes on to the general election.

In short, RedState and Human Events would be better curators of a Republican debate than CNN.

Because I am confident that this do-over debate will not come to pass, I encourage both to organize similar debates for Senate and House candidates, whose primaries mostly will not be decided until further into next year. This would give them time to work out the kinks, gain experience appealing to local television channels for airtime, and give them credibility in proposing such a debate in 2012 (er, 2011, but you know what I mean). I call on Pajamas Media, NRO, Heritage or any other independent, webbish, GOP-leaning organization to do the same. Now that I think about it, I call on Josh Marshall’s TPM empire to do the same for Democrats.

You know what would be awesome next fall, sometime after the conventions and before the general election, Commission on Presidential Debates-permitting? A RedState/Daily Kos YouTube debate.

The Kos Bubble and Rove 2.0

Published by William Beutler on November 20, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogger Panels, Blogging Officials, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Daily Kos, George Allen, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Netroots, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Television, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 7 Comments

Whether or not Kossack heads actually exploded throughout the leftosphere this weekend, I cannot say. Reports will trickle in… or not. But Newsweek’s experiment of pairing the Great and Powerful Kos with the Great and Powerful Rove is off and running, and it’s not too soon to draw some preliminary conclusions. First, in terms of drawing blog hype, Newsweek could hardly done a better job of securing two more polarizing and potentially intriguing figures — for the left and right each, I’m having a hard time coming up with any two people in politics who inspire as much passion in their detractors outside of current and former presidents.

I’ll leave the reviews to others, but 24 hours after both stories hit the web, how are they doing in terms of measurable attention? Newsweek provides two metrics that we must assume are the most accurate, simply because they are based on internal numbers, even though Newsweek does not provide actual numbers. I understand why they don’t release them, but if the Digg-ification of the Internet continues apace, they will eventually. So which of the two was e-mailed more than the other?

Newsweek's Most E-mailed Stories

As we see, this was a clear win for Rove. As of about 10 p.m. on Monday night, Rove’s piece has been e-mailed more often — but we still don’t know by how much. Second, Newsweek’s list of the top 10 most viewed stories:

Newsweek's Most Viewed Stories

Even without precise figures, this one paints a clearer picture: Rove is at number one, and Kos is nowhere to be found. Short of a Chris Bowers Google bomb, Rove is the greatest and most powerful.

How can this be? Kos is arguably at the zenith of his fame, with appearances on The Colbert Report and Meet the Press earlier in the year, still reigning as one of the RNC’s favorite bogeymen. Rove on the other hand is out of the White House and for all anyone knows, out of national politics. It may say something about Time readers just not knowing who Kos is, but I’m operating under the assumption that the online version of Newsweek reaches what IPDI has termed the “Poli-fluentials.” To be sure, time will tell. One possibility is that Kos, with his eminently Internet-based platform, stands to do better over the long run. But I also ran the Newsweek column’s permalinks through Technorati to find out how many times each had been linked by another blog. It wasn’t close. At all:

Ouch. Then again, if you look at the top blogs linking to both articles (results above are sorted by authority) a clear majority hail from the left. Maybe the left still remains more interested in Rove than the right is in Kos.

Another possibilty is more subjective, but I’ll offer it anyway: Maybe Kos just isn’t that interesting a writer. Like more than a few in my line of work, I’ve been perusing Matt Bai’s “The Argument” lately, and Bai does little to conceal his skepticism of Moulitsas’ political knowledge. Now, I have read both articles, and I did find Rove’s much more interesting. But don’t take my word for it — the blogosphere seems to agree. I have also seen both speak in a public setting, and perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but the seasoned campaign veteran was certainly more compelling than his younger upstart opponent. And there was the time when Kos got a tryout with ideo-journalistic Washington, but didn’t quite make the cut.

An aside: Last week I went with my colleagues and associates Jon Henke, Leslie Bradshaw and Jesse Thomas to see Rove co-keynote Yahoo’s Citizen 2.0 midday bash with Max Cleland (!) at the Willard Intercontinental. They’ve already written about it in detail, but I can’t help noting that their study merely put a slightly different gloss on the IPDI report linked above, i.e. “Citizen 2.0″ has replaced “Poli-fluential.”

Just about Rove, however, I must say: His arguments and observations were as well-honed as any “Internet expert” I’ve seen address a political crowd. And Rove knew what he was talking about: He recalled early computer hard drives he owned, admitted to his membership in the Apple cult, delivered a paean to Moore’s Law, and mused about the long-term effects of TiVo and time-shifting. He spoke of the Allen/Webb race (though he didn’t use the word “Macaca”) and cited studies of the blogosphere like any contributor to TechPresident. That’s why I was a little surprised and disappointed to see Michael Bassik dismiss him as “Not Citzen 2.0″ when in fact the definition given by Yahoo! makes Rove almost the perfect example. I was less surprised to see Think Progress willfully misinterpret the goings-on, but Henke has that one covered. Say what you will about Karl Rove, but don’t say he’s not a geek.

On the other hand, he did mispronounce “Kos.”

P.S. This is as good a time as any to share this photo, taken with my iPhone, of Karl Rove taking a picture of me with his iPhone:

Karl Rove and his iPhone, taken with my iPhone

The man on the right is former Senator Cleland. Believe it or not, they got along like old chums. My guess, and it’s just a hunch, is that Cleland is better at hiding his thoughts and feelings than his boisterous persona suggests. The man on the left appears to be from an Aphex Twin video.

P.P.S. What if Rove turned to blogging? Tom DeLay’s occasionally updated blog is in relaunch limbo at the moment, which provides not the best precedent (despite my own pleasantly surprised initial reaction) but then DeLay was never known as a thinker, either, and left official Washington under considerably less triumphant circumstances. So I think Rove could do well, and I bet he would even write it. If he consented to participate in rightosphere activities like appearing on Heading Right Radio (warning: automatic audio), he could quickly become one of the most influential voices on the Internet. But even then, I’m not sure he’d be the most influential voice on the right.

P.P.P.S. Then again, we haven’t even begun to address the matter of which fledgling columnist Google thinks is the greater and more powerful.

Web 2.0 May Change Media, But You Can’t Trace Web 2.0

Published by William Beutler on October 31, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogger Panels, Blogs vs. MSM, CNN, E-mail, Journalism History, Journalist Bloggers, MSM vs. Blogs, Meatspace, Metapost, Newspapers, Technology, Web video and William Beutler. 1 Comment

Not to turn Blog P.I. into a catalog of things I did last weekend, but on Saturday I sat on a panel at the Phillips Foundation’s fall retreat for recipients of its journalism fellowships (about which more below). My co-panelists were Jose Vargas from the Washington Post, Amy Schatz from the Wall Street Journal, and Abbi Tatton from CNN. I was a replacement fill-in, which is why I was the lone non-journalist — but hey, I was a licensed journalist not too long ago, so, close enough for (the discussion of) government work.

The subject was how technology is changing politics — a mandate broad enough to take it in almost any direction. And if anything, I was the wet blanket of the panel. My opening comments focused on how the Internet is changing politics in ways not unique compared to previous technologies, techniques and politics. I didn’t get all the details out on Saturday, but the argument went something like:

Radio : FDR’s fireside chats :: Blogs : The Fred File* and ‘04/’06 predecessors

Television : Nixon/Kennedy Debate :: YouTube/Internet video : “Macaca”

Direct mail/voter files : Richard Viguerie’s first claim to fame :: E-mail lists/subscribers : Why John Kerry matters in 2008

Radio and blogging both gave candidates ways to bypass established media channels and speak directly to supporters and voters. Television and online video can reframe the public’s perception of political events. Direct mail then as e-mail now communicate around the media as well as solicit campaign funds from an (ideally) opt-in crowd.

Panels such as these are at their best when the most interesting comments come from the audience. One theme that emerged in discussion was how even print journalists are being asked to produce short video (and audio) segments for the Internet when reporting from the road. To some extent, each of my fellow panelists had witnessed or dealt with this issue. It’s an interesting and even logical development, as online ad revenues rise compared to the dead tree edition. One also has to also wonder how thin it stretches their already-dwindling reportorial resources. At least in the Morissettean sense, it’s ironic that the migration of news content to the web coincides with layoffs owing to competition from the web.

My friend Robert Bluey, also present, volunteered that his alma mater, Ithaca College, is now offering a course it calls “Backpack Journalism.” He explains in an interesting post at his own blog:

Students are given a backpack with a MacBook, video camera, digital camera, a recording device and other instruments to produce a story. After receiving their assignments, the students are dispatched to cover the story using multiple media.

I find this new kind of journalism fascinating. However, I also sympathize with working journalists who are primarily writers, who may now find themselves needing to acquire new skills to adapt to a changing industry. My co-panelists are among the lucky ones — I suspect they’ll learn new tricks more quickly than some of their older colleagues.

One of whom might be Michael Scully, former journalist, journalism professor and blogger (but not the writer from The Simpsons). I tend to share his fears about what “backpack journalism” will mean in some (many, most?) newsrooms:

If Backpack Journalism is about sending ONE person out into the field to report a story, than Backpack Journalism is a travesty. It’s an accountant’s dream but an editor’s nightmare. Accountants love it because you’re sending one person out into the field to produce the work of three people; it’s an editor’s nightmare because the quality of the work is diminished.

I submit that the true business model for New Media must be to send THREE people out into the field. Let one report, one produce, one shoot. Each skill is very important, each skill is very different, each skill has a professional value.

On the other hand, someone who could do all three well would be highly sought-after and accordingly compensated. If the job description caught on, it would presumably spur different kinds of students to enter journalism in the first place. Myself, I actually applied to film school out of high school, but instead pursued print journalism in-state, as I that proved more realistic. But if becoming a “backpack journalist” was an option at Allen Hall, I’d at least have given it the old college try. Heck, I might have even finished my Journalism double-major.

· · ·

And you know, I bet we can fit this into a hastily-assembled anti-triumphalist SAT problem like the ones above:

Print Journalists : The Internet :: Pre-Internet Journalists, I.e. Mostly Print Journalists : Every New Media Before the Internet

Note: As I promised above, a bit more about the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship Program. They are presently seeking applicants for 2008. If you’re inclined toward constitutional democracy and classically liberal economics, and have less than ten years of journalism experience, then you (yes, you!) could land $50,000 to $75,000 to write on a topic of your choosing. Details here. Tell ‘em Blog P.I. sent you.

*I was also the only panelist with a client of current interest, so it made for a few interesting moments as the subject was indeed taken in almost any direction. Hats off to the Standard’s Michael Goldfarb for trying to get me to make news.

Dear Leaderboard, or: Mmmm… Pie Chart!

Published by William Beutler on October 25, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Cable News, Charts and Graphs, MSM, Memeorandum, Newspapers, Tech Blogosphere, Technorati and William Beutler. 2 Comments

When Gabe Rivera unveiled his Techmeme Leaderboard a few weeks back, we politically-minded Internet junkies experienced something akin to spending Christmas morning watching another kid open presents. Okay, that’s pushing it. Maybe it’s like comparing your Easter morning haul with a friend who received a Nintendo game, when all you got was chocolate (I’ve forgiven, but never forgotten).

Top 25 sites on the Memeorandum LeaderboardIt made sense, though. The bloggers who show up on Techmeme are much more likely to track themselves on that site than are the bloggers who populate Memeorandum likely to watch themselves. Of couse, all tech bloggers are geeks in good standing, while only some of us political types are. So they get the goodies first.

But as expected, Rivera rolled out his Memeorandum Leaderboard, and he did so this week. As he explained, the Leaderboard

identifies 100 of [the most influential political blogs], ranking sources simply by how much they’ve appeared on memeorandum in the past month. It updates every 20 minutes and offers archives of past days. … The memeorandum Leaderboard doesn’t tell the whole story of course. For instance, influential curators of opinion like Instapundit.com don’t figure highly given memeorandum’s preference for longer articles. Yet it remains a handy portal to many of the sources with the greatest role in framing and shaping the national debate.

It’s handy, all right, and it fills a need. Five years ago, in a very different political blogosphere, The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem was the definitive guide to the top political blogs. But with Rob Neppell (née N.Z. Bear) now focused on other projects, it’s fallen into obsolescence. The Technorati Top 100 was a welcome addition, but its inbound link counts were sometimes unreliable, it never focused on politics per se, and as I pointed out last year, the political blogs have to share the top 100 with many other genres. Since then, Technorati has lost its direction in other ways, and it’s too soon to tell whether founding CEO Dave Sifry’s departure will change things. I’m not counting on it.

So while Rivera’s list is worth analyzing, it should come as no surprise that the analysis so far has come from more tech-centric bloggers. For example, here’s TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley marveling at how important the legacy media remains, especially compared to the ’sphere in which he moves:

According to the list, based on story headlines on Memeorandum the New York Times, Washington Post and AP control over 22.4% of political headlines. The Atlantic Online, The National Review and CNN (twice) also make the top ten, leaving slim pickings for political blogs. … The (perhaps sad) state of the political blogosphere stands in contrast to the tech blogosphere, which dominates the equivalent Techmeme Leaderboard list, holding approx 64% of all spots.

The observation is fair, but I object to the judgment call. For one thing, defining the subject matter of Memeorandum as “politics” is far too narrow. Foreign affairs, U.S. diplomacy, domestic policy, electoral politics and sundry current events make up the subject matter at Memeorandum — a much broader spectrum of news and analysis than what TechMeme covers. Moreover, these subjects often require reporting from around the country and around the world that even in the digital age aged institutions with more resources than resolve continue to dominate. Most of the stories on TechMeme emanate from the Silicon Valley; Memeorandum spans the world at large.

GOP Internet consultant Patrick Ruffini has already taken a crack at evaluating what it says about the Right’s online fortunes. What it says is that Republicans and conservatives need to reinvent their online channels of communication:

Lots of bloggers have been over to Iraq, a commitment which makes the professional activists in the leftosphere look like dilettantes. Guys like Jeff [Emanuel], Bill Roggio, and Michael Yon have been the advance guard for this stuff. But nothing little has been done to institutionalize their work, to create counter-memes by controlling the upstream information flow through a system for nurturing these upstart war reporters. The failure to develop an effective counter-narrative out of Iraq is reflective of the “conservative message machine” and its reluctance to think outside the box.

Myself, I’m still thinking it over. To get started on the process, I separated all the websites on this afternoon’s Leaderboard into a few arbitrary categories and added up the percentages accorded to each. I then created a simple chart with Zoho Sheet (beating out Google Docs by a slim margin and NeoOffice by a much wider one) to visualize the statistical spread. Others will have different ways of breaking this out — and I may have different ways at a later date — but here’s what I came up with:

Memeorandum Leaderboard (by source type) - http://sheet.zoho.com

I should note the numbers taken off the leaderboard do not actually add up to 100%. That’s something I intend to ask Rivera about, and because the Zoho chart rounds them up to reach a sensible 100%, here are the actual numbers as I compiled them:


ARBITARY CATEGORY INEXACT NUMBER
Newspaper/Wire Content 38.65%
Liberal Blogs & Websites 14%
MSM-Backed Online Content 11.4%
Conservative Blogs & Websites 10.25%
Cable/TV News-Based Content 4.7%
Primary Sources Online 0.98%
Hard to Categorize Websites 0.86%

This dilutes MSM-owned websites only just a bit; as you can see, print and wire-based news stories commanded much, much more attention than websites based on television news, so you can squint and add that back in if you’d like. Add in MSM-created content specifically for the web, and it’s up over 60%. That is also a more arbitrary but, I would argue, more necessary category — “MSM Online” is where I placed any ostensibly non-partisan blog and any non-blog content by more partisan sources. These days established media organizations are creating more and more content for the web, and much of it differs in character from what they publish on dead trees. Liberal and Conservative blogs are more self-explanatory; the hard-to-categorize sites included Drudge Report and The Moderate Voice. The Primary Sources were Gallup, Rasmussen and whitehouse.gov. If anybody cares, I can forward the list as I compiled it. It could probably use some revision, and I certainly reserve the right to have made a clerical error here or there.

I’ll leave you that to chew over for now. I’ll be back with answers when I have them, and with any luck, I will be back inside of a month with a few more thoughts about what all is going on here.

The CNN/Something Awful Debate

Published by William Beutler on August 17, 2007 in Academic Blogging, Asymmetrical Media, Barack Obama, CNN, Debates, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Message Boards, Seriously and Tech Blogosphere. 8 Comments

Inspired by the recent CNN/YouTube debate, today’s New York Times asked several media observers to imagine other ways in which the Web 2.0 world might influence presidential politics. I found Matt Bai’s suggestion particularly interesting:

Maybe someday soon the candidates will have laptop computers at their lecterns, and we’ll hang a giant screen behind the stage. Then, as one candidate is talking, the others will use instant messaging to create a kind of scrolling commentary and critique, and all the comments will appear overhead.

While John Edwards is decrying special interests, Bill Richardson might type: “Gee, John, what exactly would you call the trial lawyers?” Or Christopher Dodd might write: “Why is Kucinich still talking? LOL.”

It’s a neat idea. This year’s Personal Democracy Forum tried something similar, with audience members’ comments appearing on a screen behind the panelists. That worked all right, though it did distract from those onstage.

For a presidential debate then, the comments would indeed have to come from the candidates — not to mention, they need something to do while they wait five or ten minutes for their next turn.

And what if CNN teamed up with uber-message board Something Awful? Well, I believe it might look a little something like this:

Democratic Debate as co-sponsored by Something Awful

P.S. I also noticed that the Times titled Tom Brokaw’s contribution “Sip and Spin.” Now, I’m perfectly fine with potential presidents answering questions from snowmen, but if you know whence the phrase come — no, not the toy — well, isn’t that a little undignified?

Update: Something Awful has found this post. Of course, they don’t seem to care for it and even rescinded the initial link. But the poster did concede:

The picture is pretty much SA I guess.

And as you can see in the comments, this post has been blessed with one of the most sincere statements a latter-day message boarder can offer. Thanks, guys.

Updated again: Okay, the people on this SA board seemed to like it a bit more.

Bring the Noises Off

Published by William Beutler on June 25, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Democrats, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere and Netroots. Closed

Headline at Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog, June 21:

The ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Myth: Right Wing Falsely Claims Progressives Want To Resurrect Mandatory Balance

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Fox News Sunday, June 24:

WALLACE: So would you revive the fairness doctrine?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I’m looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris, because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.

Zing!

When I saw that TP headline last week, I was more than a little dubious. After all, Dennis Kucinich is an outspoken fan of the dead regulation, as are certain quarters of the leftosphere. But little did I expect that this absurd claim would be proved “false” (a favorite word of TP and Media Matters) by such a prominent Democrat, not to mention one known primarily as a moderate.

It reminds me of a brief controversy from earlier this month, where The Politico’s John Bresnahan reported that Harry Reid had called outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace “incompetent.” Bloggers from the call didn’t remember it, accused Bresnahan of making the whole thing up, and when it turned out he hadn’t, they weren’t especially contrite about it.

What’s interesting about all this is that in both cases, prominent representatives of the liberal netroots strenuously denied something that was not only true but arguably even helpful to their side, simply because a political adversary had stated it. In both cases they went overboard, creating more negative press for themselves than if they’d just left it alone.

Think Progress would certainly be right if they merely argued that conservative bloggers talk about the fairness doctrine coming back more than progressive bloggers, but arguing that “progressives” have no interest in using the doctrine as a weapon against right-wing talk radio just won’t fly. And as James Joyner asked at the time, what part of the Democrats’ Senate leader calling a Bush appointee “incompetent” did they not like?

The key difference is that Think Progress tried to maintain a position that most observers knew was not true, then dropped the subject. Bresnahan’s critics, on the other hand, defended a point most probably didn’t know for sure and then, unwilling to end on a retraction, changed the terms of debate instead.

I don’t have a full case to make about what it all means, but it is interesting that here in the span of two weeks we have two examples of the left’s own noise machine being unsure of exactly what sound to make.

Games Ron Paul Supporters Play

Published by William Beutler on May 17, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blog Fights, Libertarians, Ron Paul, Social Networking and White House '08. 38 Comments

At what point does the online support for libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul do his candidacy more harm than good? That is, when does his obviously devoted online fan base start to turn off uncommitted voters, rather than provide an example to follow? I think we might just be getting to that point.

In few communities has the outsize influence of the Ronbots (borrowing more from “Romneybot” than “Rahmbot” here) been felt more than fast-rising social news website Digg. Digg is a prize target for manipulators — getting listed on the front page all but guarantees a tidal wave of traffic headed toward the submitted link. After repeated revisions to the algorithm, it apparently remains no less vulnerable.

Paul supporters have been moving stories onto the front page for a couple weeks now, and while I found it curious and somewhat amusing, Diggers are quirky and I didn’t find it illegitimate or overly distracting — that is, until this morning.

Check out the top five stories, as of about 7:30 Eastern time:

Ron Paul's outsize Digg support

Those top three are not quite all the same story, but they are certainly variations on a theme. Note also the separation in digg totals with the next two, non-Paul submissions. And considering Paul’s negligible support in meatspace, one gets the distinct impression that the system has been gamed.

Others have suggested that his online support is manufactured. I don’t think that’s the case. Click through the headlines (here, here and here), take a look at the comments and the digging (voting) histories of the users submitting them (here, here and here). They may all be acting in concert, but there’s no reason to believe these are not legitimate members — two of the three submitters signed up last summer.

But even if they are acting sincerely, this is simply not what the vast majority of users go to to Digg for. The website is at its best when it provides variety. Forerunner Slashdot has codified this as “The Omelette,” but Digg manages to create this organically. Most of the time.

To cherry pick just one comment out of the third story, here is user 9Digits throwing up his hands:

I’m an anti-war Republican, and I still find your candidate’s campaign to be goddamn annoying. If these are the type of supporters he’s got, there’s not a chance in hell I’ll vote for him.

This follows the Ronbots’ success in compelling ABC News to add their candidate to an online poll. That doesn’t bother me so much, except as ABC knew well, the poll was about to be freeped. But it also follows Charles Johnson’s decision to delist Paul from his online poll at Little Green Footballs. To whatever degree ABC News has an obligation to create a level playing field, even one that they know will be gamed, Johnson has less of one.

And yet that still says more about the general uselessness of online polls than about Paul’s supporters. Is the backlash unfair? Perhaps it would be, if they didn’t seem so prone to the same kind of vitriol that sometimes still causes trouble for their counterparts on the left.

If Paul’s supporters are willing to take the effort to game online communities not already predisposed to isolationist libertarianism they should be willing to accept the consequences. That certainly means their own ostracism — but it also risks creating the impression that Paul’s support is manufactured. And especially in politics, people don’t like being played.

Probably Elizabeth or: Comment Registration Makes Good Neighbors

Published by William Beutler on April 19, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Comment Sections, Metapost and White House '08. 3 Comments

Since last week, D.G. Hall (née Joe Tobacco) of Cadillac Tight has been trying to nail down the identities of a couple of interesting commenters on his blog, who abruptly appeared this past week, then just as abruptly left. And you probably already know exactly who one of them is.

Elizabeth Edwards vs. Monty JohnsonThe saga begins with the AP story from last Wednesday, about Elizabeth Edwards’ feud (if it wasn’t one already, it was about to be) with Monty Johnson, a neighbor in Raleigh, North Carolina. Said by Mrs. Edwards to be a “rabid, rabid Republican” (albeit one with a “Go Rudy Giuliani 2008″ sign in his yard, so how much of an extremist could he really be?), Mr. Johnson had once “brought out a gun while chasing workers investigating a right of way near his property,” and maintains a “slummy” lot, to which Johnson replied, “I have to budget. I have to live within my means.”

If nothing else, it was an off-message moment for John Edwards’ campaign and for Elizabeth (or as we like to call her, EE) as well.

Hall noticed the story and posted an excerpt, “wondering” why the leftosphere hadn’t noticed this. On which post, of all people, EE (or someone purporting to be her) left a comment advancing her side of the story:

I don’t hate him. I don’t know him. He is not my neighbor. He invests in property near ours, which, I understand, is under contract for above $1.5M. He owns at least 15 different pieces of property … When workers were hooking up power in the area, the Duke Power folks complained that he had threatened them with a gun when they were in the power easement right-of-way at the street in front of his property … The Rudy sign is fine: it gives us a way to tell people where to turn.

Hall welcomed her to the site and asked for confirmation that she really said of Johnson, “I wouldn’t be nice to him, anyway.” The following morning, EE responded once more:

I would always be nice to someone. (I am a Southerner; we are nice to everyone and particularly nice to those with whom we disagree. And North Carolina is a pretty divided state politically, so we all get a lot of chances to practice that.) He had previously said I wasn’t nice to him. As far as I know, I have never laid eyes on him.

To which another commenter asked:

Ah, but Mrs. Edwards, the question was…Is the above quote accurate?

EE didn’t return, and as of Friday afternoon, that was that. Until yesterday, that is, when the same post received a comment from one Ronda Johnson, claiming to be the daughter of old man Johnson:

Thank you to Mrs. Edwards for her investigative reporting, but she is completely incorrect! It is actually quite scary to myself and the rest of my family that she has went so far as to investigate my father, Monty Johnson! Unfortunately, she is not up to date or accurate at all ! Again, the property on Ivey road sold several years ago in order to keep his current proprty across the street from her where he has lived since his grand daughter was born 9 years ago! He has never owned proprty on Union Grove Church Road, though his son does in his son’s name! The rest of the lot’s and acreage are located right across the street from her and mostly filled with mobile homes! As far as the incident that occurred with Duke Power, Monty was not in town and the sherriff was called and Duke Power made to leave because they were in the wrong! I know because the incident occurred with me! As for her being friendly, well I never seen that! I was volunteer coordinator for Emma,s class last year and couldn’t even get money for a pack of pansies donated by them or for any other project we asked for help or money on! I never even got a phone call returned! John attended 1 party for the teachers birthday and sat directly across from me and never spoke! Though he did maintain a smile the entire time, even while eating! I must say that the silky pony will be the prettiest president we’ve ever had, should he succeed! Elizabeth hasn’t been rich long enough to have rich friends and too long to have poor friends, so I guess the lonely sole will just investigate and pick on her neighbors!

There’s something curious about the fact that every single one of Ms. Johnson’s sentences ends with an exclamation point! It doesn’t exactly come across as a sign of sincerity! Nor does the “silky pony” reference! But you never know, maybe Ronda Johnson reads blogs! After all, Elizabeth Edwards does!

Plus, there is a Ronda Johnson listed (Google her name, or call their new 411 service) as living in Raleigh. Same h-less spelling, too. Hall tried calling it, but couldn’t get an answer.

Hall had also matched EE’s e-mail address to other plausible EE registrations, such as one at My Left Wing. The address (Hall says the account is bouncing now) is probablyElizabeth at johnedwards.com, perhaps mischievously, suggesting the user knew other blog readers would question its provenance. Plus, being a minor scholar of EE’s blogospheric participaticipation, I’d say it certainly sounds like her.

As Hall graciously notes in his wrap-up post, he contacted me and I lived up to the name of this blog by matching the IP addresses to the possible commenters’ probable locations. As he puts it:

1) The IP address for Ronda Johnson resolves to the correct geographical area, and the comment left here matches up nicely with a comment Ronda Johnson left at Bill Quick’s site on April 12th, when this story was breaking. I can’t imagine anyone running around the internet impersonating Mr. Johnson’s daughter, but there is always a possibility someone is doing so. Caveat emptor on this one.

2) The IP address for Elizabeth Edwards resolves to Orlando, FL, which isn’t consistent with Mrs. Edwards’ location. However, John Edwards was in Fort Myers, FL on April 15th (thanks again, William), so it’s entirely plausible that his wife could have been using an Orlando based dial-up ISP to leave those comments. Still, we can’t be sure, so Caveat emptor.

That sounds about right. Could be both, maybe even neither — but it’s probably at least one of them (EE), and someone who knows the other one (RJ). If all is as it seems, an AP story reporting some offhand comments fueled a lingering resentment between two neighboring families, subsequently breaking out into the comment section of an interested but uninvolved blogger.

Heck, they’re practically the Montagues and Capulets of the Research Triangle. Sort of not really. But just think of how it’ll play at the next PTA night.

Bonus observation! Fifteen years ago, there wasn’t a blogosphere to hash out neighborly disputes like this one. But they did have something arguably better.

Tragedy 2.0

Published by William Beutler on April 17, 2007 in 9/11 Attacks, Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Cable News, Facebook, MSM vs. Blogs and Tech Blogosphere. Closed

Post-Columbine, post-9/11, post-Iraq, are we desensitized to mass murders these days?

Doesn’t seem to be: The tragedy at Virginia Tech has at least captivated the mainstream media, pulling it out of its embarrassing, Anna Nicole/Imus-obsessing doldrums to a hypertensive level not seen since the aforementioned debacles plus Katrina.

Each major media disaster story since at least the dot-com bubble reveals new voices and resources from the online mediasphere, and to the extent that we know to follow them — that we can devise filters to locate them — it helps us understand these things better than we did back when most of the media we consumed was on glossy paper.

And since Drudge and MSNBC and others have already reported the name and online profile of Emily Hilscher, the first victim of yesterday’s horrible awfulness* — and as an antidote to Wayne Chiang, the Asian-American Hokie gun fetishist with girl troubles and a Livejournal account — I might as well share this screen shot from Facebook:

Emily Hilscher on Facebook

Her page is not public, and I suppose it will probably remain as much in the hands of her friends and family. But there are also 27 groups with her name in their main content and with hundreds of members, which grew literally overnight.

Part of me thinks there’s something invasive in writing about this, but ultimately it’s all part of the record. Here there are no candles and no songs — but it’s a digital vigil. It doesn’t convey how it actually feels, but it does show that people feel.

P.S. Via Techmeme, I see Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls and Xeni Jardin have been thinking along the same lines. And somehow, Slate’s Michael Agger managed to write an entire article about the massacre and social networking without a single mention of Facebook. Plus, according to Hotline On Call, producers from ABC and NBC have been posting interview requests to Facebook:

Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the horrific tragedy at Virginia Tech. In our ongoing coverage, we want to speak with people that knew Cho Seung-Hui. We have anchors and producers on campus that would love to meet with you.

Okay, I feel a bit less of a ghoul now.

*I don’t know what else to call it, I’m never very good writing about these things, and I’ve already blown the chance to suspend blogging, which I might as well have because I didn’t have a Benchmark Poll ready to go today.

This is Why Crazy People Don’t Get Elected

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 24, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Entertainment, Tech Blogosphere and White House '08. 1 Comment

Anyone even remotely connected to politics knows that Dennis Kucinich is a joke. And when you’re a joke, nobody attacks you because it’s not worth their time.

But in this day and age, it’s just too easy to create multimedia, and Jeff Jarvis shows how easy it is to demonstrate that Kucinich is a nut:


Click To Play

This is why people are careful about how they appear and what they say. When you’re normal, this sort of thing doesn’t stick. But when you’re nuts, it works like a charm.