by
biverson | September 22, 2007 at 06:02 am
461 views | 10 Recommendations |
1 comment
As I've been suggesting since attending YearlyKos, bloggers in politics have moved into the mainstream in many states and political arenas. The Washington post notes that
elected officials even consider bloggers part of the press corps.
In the latest example of "disruptive technology," blogs and how politicians use quotes from blogs, has become an issue in its own right. As the WaPo notes, quoting "Dan the Man" who blogged on a site that doesn't require registration and allows anonymous posts,
Ads that quote from blogs, on which it is often difficult to identify the author, represent a benchmark in increasingly negative political campaigns, several political analysts said.
That benchmark is a new low however. The American Association of Political Consultants code of ethics prohibits running misleading ads, and that includes ads where you can't easily identify who made statements, claims, or is quoted.
The particular problem in this case is that the blog quotes:
[q
url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102334_2.html?wpisrc=newsletter"]Even
though it appears that de la Piedra, 24, wrote the comments about
Simmons in Hugo's ad, several people who study political advertising
said Hugo's ad appears to violate a well-known standard in political
campaigns that a charge against an opponent should be easy to
verify.[/q]
For digital natives, this may not be a problem, but many voters are seniors and other digital immigrants who don't quite "get" the lay of the blogging landscape, and thus are not able to determine the truth or validity of this kind of statement.
Stay tuned for more, as though it may be deplorable and unethical, that doesn't mean it won't become the political rage.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 13:52 on September 22nd, 2007
biverson, nice work. Negative campaigning is bad enough when the truth gets twisted into lies, but anonymous slams is getting into a whole new territory: not everyone takes on the same mantle of responsibility when presented with a means to publish to the entire world...