I Got Your Stinkin’ Ethics Right Here
Hullabaloo — As a response to the current ethical dilemma of the so-called “activist” bloggers many of whom are into blogging as the “people’s media.”
The larger question of blogger ethics in and of itself is a red herring. It’s suddenly a “concern” of the SCLM and by extension the halls of academe, because they are taking heat from us — and people are listening — and they don’t like it. Sadly, the only bloggers who are going to be restrained by these concerns are on the left. The right wing bloggers are now a fully accepted part of the Right Wing Noise Machine — positioned in the dumb mainstream media’s collective lizard brain as fearless Wild West mavericks defying the establishment. Their “ethics” are the same as any other right wing media — non-existent.
So the left blogosphere will be the focus of this crusade for online ethics. We don’t have institutions like the Claremont Institute who can hire us on as “fellows” — and launder Republican money through it to pay us. We aren’t going to get our marching orders and talking points through the coordinated “left wing” media because there is no coordinated left wing media. We are out here on our own, and when or if we say or do something controversial, there is no institutional defense of us because there is no institution. Certainly, we aren’t going to get paid big bucks to be a member of the team.
So fuck a “code of ethics.” It will only serve to marginalize us.
All we really have, and ever had, is our credibility with our readers as opinion writers and committed activists. We shall have to measure all of our decisions based upon personal integrity and issue a blanket call of caveat emptor. It’s all there is. And, frankly it’s all we need.
ke any sense to anyone? First of all nobody is really talking about a codified book of ethics that have to be followed lock-step. How about some basic guidelines, like not accepting bribes. Or like not being paid by someone who you then boost them and kind of pretend they are not paying you. And if you are boosting them at least say so in the piece directly, not on some other post. Maybe like mentioning it right away. “I should mention that I work for the Dean campaign. And I think he rocks!!” That’s fine with me. Is this asking too much?
The problem from a public perspective is that the left wing bloggers have already sold out. The Rathergate memo and their defense of it was a prime example. The right-wing bloggers were digging and the left-wing bloggers were foolishly defending. Now a primary blog such as this (above) says screw ethics! The DailyKOS says there is an enemy more important than any of this. Do any of these people have any concern about credibility?
It will get worse by the minute. Brad DeLong, a media watchdog of sorts gets into ridiculous parsing of the WSJ article as if anyone cared. Is he Clinton? Bill Gates?
There is something you’ll note about the Bloggergate versus the Armstrong Williams situation. Everyone on the left is defending the bloggers and trivializing ethics. With Williams I see all the right wingers condemning him. I don’t see people cropping up saying, “Heck, it was ok — a matter of interpretation.”
Even one-time columnist Dan Gillmor finds some odd and contrived rationale in his new blog on Grassroots journalism.
The WSJ fell into what I call the “lazy equivalence” trap in this story today about two bloggers who got paid as consultants by the Dean presidential campaign. The article seeks to connect these payments with the vastly more serious Armstrong Williams payola scandal, in which the Bush administration paid the right-wing commentator more than $240,000 to promote an education policy.
What the heck is lazy equivalence? It reminds me of the hooker joke. “Will you take $20?” “What do you take me for, a whore?” ” Will you take $200?” “Ok!” We’ve all heard the joke. So apparently $3000 a month is chicken feed to Dan.
Now what is lost in all this is long-term consequences of comments like “fuck ethics.” There will be a number of lawsuits (I can predict this now with assurance) brought against bloggers for defamation. Libel suits, big ones. I can already see opportunities. One way to make these suits work is to take any first amendment (press) rights away from the entire blogging scene making it much easier to bring these legal actions. On top of that negative comments about ethics will be used in court to show malice, contempt and carelessness adding to the problem. Any blogger who has even remotely said anything such as “fuck ethics” or pooh-poohed any of this can be a target. It all comes out in discovery and it isn’t pretty. The fact that Gillmor and all the uber-bloggers who see this scene as some sort of “people’s journalism” don’t get this, is mind-boggling.
Dvorak,
For years, I’ve followed your writing, and always thought you were intelligent and generally insightful. Throughout this time, I also read plenty of criticism. Criticism which I generally disregarded for a number of reasons (e.g., inaccurate, sour grapes, etc.). While I frequently disagreed with your conclusions, I at least felt you arrived at them honestly and thoughtfully. Therefore, I thought you were a worthwhile read.
But when I read something like:
“And if you are boosting them at least say so in the piece directly, not on some other post. Maybe like mentioning it right away. “I should mention that I work for the Dean campaign. And I think he rocks!!” That’s fine with me. Is this asking too much?” (as well as other egregious comments)
I read that and I think, “you know, maybe he is a hack.” Your inability to grasp the basic facts, lack of desire to do so, or maybe just a general desire to be disengenuous and malicious about this matter makes me think I’ve been wrong about you all this time.
Indeed, your utter lack of concern for accuracy and general sloppiness seems to indicate that you too would get on board with the idea of “fuck ethics” if indeed that’s what anyone was advocating.
But you’re so clueless or willfully naivete about this situation and generally such a stubborn jackass (a quality that often suits your writing, but often exposes your weaknesses when you’re clearly wrong), it’s abundantly clear that it would be pointless to walk you through the situation and point out the inumerable errors you’ve made in a few short paragraphs. You’re clearly outside of this discussion looking in and your ignorance is blindingly apparent. You don’t get what Digby means by this particular “Code of Ethics”, you don’t get why the Right is trying to establish it, you just don’t get it.
A code of ethics for bloggers would be silly. There are no qualifications for being a blogger. It is what is it: any bonehead can be a blogger. Reputation will sort everything else out (word spreads).
“There will be a number of lawsuits (I can predict this now with assurance)”
Hmmm … that sucks. But it sounds like it will be necessary. And, just like that, the golden age of the internet comes to a close.
As Romey says, “street cred” is one step above “prison respect.”
Similarly, “blogging” is one step above “flaming.”
Street cred is to athletes is as blogging is to writers. Equally modern, pernicious, and chock full of bullshit.
#2 Anonymously –
What exactly is your point? I’m not telepathic – what precisely is it about this paragraph
{{{“And if you are boosting them at least say so in the piece directly, not on some other post. Maybe like mentioning it right away. “I should mention that I work for the Dean campaign. And I think he rocks!!” That’s fine with me. Is this asking too much?” (as well as other egregious comments)”}}}
that triggers such bile in you? You’re a stereotype of the left – all emotion with no attempt at logical persuasion whatsoever.
“willfully naivete”
Hah, that one was funny.
As comments 1&2 show there is a % of the people who just dont get it…maybe never will.
The contrast of the response from the “right” on the Williams case is glaring. The condemnation has for all intents been consistant.
Did the left even wince when MM called the terrorists in Iraq “Minutemen” or DailyKos response to deaths in Iraq was “Screw Them”. At this point I guess I’m not to suprised by “Fuck Ethics” This kind of imbalance and retoric is part of what motivated me to vote straight red ticket for the first time in this old hippies life. That plus Kerry was the lamest Dem canidate I’ve ever seen in 40 years.
I guess Churchill was right.
One way to make these suits work is to take any first amendment (press) rights away from the entire blogging scene making it much easier to bring these legal actions.
Mr. Dvorak is sadly perpetuating the erroneous idea that the news media is a definition of our First Amendment rights rather than an example. Of course, the MSM has been careful to cultivate this idea, that the press has special rights, like the right to withold evidence in a criminal investigation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 1st Amendment is a right belonging to all Americans, not just the news and entertainment businesses.
However, perhaps blogging could be denied 1st Amendment protections. After all, nobody seems to care that commercial speech is no longer afforded 1st Amendment protection and those who advocate campaign finance reform don’t seem to have a problem restricting political speech. Perhaps the left will be happy when only the New York Times and CBS News will be permitted to freely express their views.
Can you sue someone for libel by yelling slanderous statements in public? AFAIK, the answer is no. You can walk out your door and say that Bush smokes crack daily and that Kerry does it with a sheep and be free from prosecution. Furthermore, if you write down these statements onto a poster and walk about town can you be sued? Again, AFAIK, no. Blogging is nothing more than this. I fail to see how anyone could succeed in suing someone over libel in a blog.
The only thing I rail against is this post is the haughty perspective of the left. As if they somehow have cornered the market on ethics. (“So the left blogosphere will be the focus of this crusade for online ethics”). Give me a break. It is that kind of high-horse attitude that is losing them votes each year. Granted, the Right isn’t any better, but this article shows the true elitist attitude of the left.
Politicians, on both sides should always be questioned. Their motives always checked. So, Dean bought out a bunch of bloggers and the Repubs bought out Armstrong Williams. Ok. As I see it, they did the equivalent of having a bunch of people with signs run around the neighborhood.
Most people use strikethrough when they correct a post, so that the comments make sense to those who didn’t see the original version. I don’t think it’s unethical to do it the way you did it, but it’s certainly unconventional.
I don’t agree with the guy who said “fuck ethics.” That is one angry dude. But I also think that this thing with Kos is getting blown way out of proportion. He honestly, really did have something like, “I should mention that I work for the Dean campaign. And I think he rocks!!” on his webpage while he was getting paid. Not inside every post, but on the sidebar. Isn’t that enough? I agree that if he hadn’t had something like that, it would have been unethical.
Perhaps this is too nuanced a position to hold these days… or maybe I don’t get it. Good thing I don’t blog or I might get sued!
Okay, I just read this:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2112314/“
If it’s true that Kos has been taking money without disclosure from all those congressional candidates he’s been promoting, then I agree that he’s a total bastard.
To #8: A lot of the more popular right-wing bloggers (at least the libertarian-types) haven’t exactly been burning these guys at the stake rhetorically. See Instapundit, Sullivan, Jeff Jarvis. Maybe there’s a glaring contrast between the reactions of the two halves of the blogosphere because there’s a glaring contrast in the seriousness of the two stories.
A straight red ticket, huh? Must have been all those drugs you took. Are you talking about the Churchill quote, “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”?
Thomas,
You can sue someone for yelling slanderous statements in public. The law provides for libel claims and slander claims, the difference being that libel is a defamatory statement in writing and slander is a defamatory statement that is spoken. There is no other legal difference between libel and slander claims, although there is a practical difference in that it may be harder to prove a slander claim because you have to have prove that the words were spoken. Usually, it’s easier to prove the libelous statements because the proof that they were made is written or published somewhere.
Ken: If memory serves, he also posted something to the effect that he was working for some other people, whose identities he wouldn’t disclose.
But I do think an administration paying for it is worse than a campaign paying for it.
You know, Zuniga, and all the children who gather ’round him and who hang on his every word, are not going to care about ethics. To them, it’s about “winning”, however they happen to define it at the moment. The left’s philosophical touchstone these days is solipsism.
Right on John. DailyKos just doesn’t get it. There are two issues at play here.
First, did DailyKos sell opinions for cash? We’ll never know that for sure, but it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise most people if he did. His “disclaimer” said he was providing “technical” assistance. M’kay. Had this been a rightwing blog, DailyKos would have been front and center of an all-out ethics attack on him.
Which brings us to the second issue. Dailykos’ own reaction to the Williams affair, namely he assumes all rightwing blogs are on the take. When you say stuff like that, and people then find out you were receiving money in expectation of a favourable opinion, then you HAVE to know people are going to rip you to shreds.
DailyKos only has his own hypocrisy to blame for this incident. When the Armstrong Williams thing broke, the rightwing blogs went off on Williams like a nuclear bomb. It was no holds barred, balls to the wall condemnation. Contrast this with the reaction we’re seeing from the left about the Dailykos incident – the condemnation is levelled at the whistleblower (Teachout) or DailyKos’s dubious ethics are “rationalised”.
Hypocrisy stinks as much on the left as it does on the right, that’s for sure.
Exactly right, Dvorak. But don’t let’s worry about it too much. The media revolution that has already destroyed most of CBS News’s creditibility will do much more, and KosGate is a very small event.
Frank IBC,
As I wrote, my comment was to Dvorak (i.e., “Dvorak,), who historically, is a stubborn jackass about these things. That is, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. If you Frank IBC were actually interested in this topic rather than a (apparently) a goofball blog commentor trying to pick a fight, you’d probably do some legwork and try to figure out what the situation is.
Any blogger that doesn’t disclose if he/she is taking money from a political campaign (and from whom) is a blog that I am not interested in reading.
The comment “fuck ethics” speaks of one who is arrogant and self centered. Especially from one who has blasted conservative bloggers from potientially or actually recieving money from campaigns. Posters from dailykos want everyone to believe that everything was on the up and up with kos. I’m not so sure that’s true, but I do think that ethics ins blogging is something that does need to be discussed and taken seriously. Since this has all hit the blogs, I know that the ones that are upfront and state that they have not taken money from political campaigns or parties are the ones that I have continued to read. Some of the others I read but don’t take as seriously.
Incredible! There are people, event some commenters here, who don’t seem to be troubled by a monstrous declaration like “fuck a code of ethics”. Thats a sad sign of how low many people have fallen in the last years. As you say, that can even be a cause of trouble for the people that uphold such egregious piece of crap. No wonder some quarters of society are in such a miserable moral shape.
#2
The ‘ethics’ they’re referring to here are the ethics that you bring to the table. The ones your parents should have taught you before you went out into the big wide world.Your personal ethical code. No amount of ‘established’ ethical standards is going to make any difference to anyone who doesn’t have any. The disregard that the Daily KOS holds for the right isn’t suprising. The distain they have for their own readership shouldn’t be, but is. The very -take our word for it- attitude they accuse the right of holding is now theirs to own.
Honesty isn’t something you should necessarily wear on your sleave, but if you claim to be a political voice it isn’t something your readership should have to hunt for.
The blog is devolving into something a little more sophisticated than the Democratic Underground.
I love the “pure and raw honesty” displayed by this lefty idiot. Keep up the good work! I’ve always believed that “Liberalism is a powerful desease” that brings out the worst of emotions in a human, such as hatred, anger, resentment, jeasously, pettiness, and downright dumbness. Liberalism actually has the power “if left un-treated” to drain a human’s brain of all common sense. This horrible desease has been known to strip a human of a perfectly good college education, while leaving the human with the I.Q. of a whiny spoiled brat 8 year old. So “fuck a code of ethics”, I rest my case!
As to the Churchill quote, I assumed he was referring to “Show me a young conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” (because he referred to no longer leaning left as he did in his youth)
Kim, you sound like a lunatic too. Geez.
Some readers are taking things too seriously. The blog’s name is “Dvorak Uncensored”. Like many of us, John Dvorak reads, votes and sometimes ridicules.
If somebody comes to this blog under the impression that a polished book or column will be published 3 times a day, then what can I say? It seems like some people come here hoping to see John trip.
#12 & #23 Jason, that is what I was referring to although Kens quote is also quite accurate. Ken, why is it libs seem to resort to some kind of personal attack? I assure you that my drug use in the 70′ had nothing to do with my decision. It had everything to do with the actions and rethoric of the Dems in general and the pathetic canidates they endorsed. It was a protest vote, this country needs at least 2 parties and this lunatic fringe that seems to have no clue is destroying it. I believe the Dem party is like an alky and needs to hit bottom before it can reform itself. About Williams, if you catagorize Instapundit, Sullivan, Jarvis as “Right Wing” you need to get out more. Go to LGF he was trashed.
I have just set up a blog — commentary on current events, politics, some humor, etc.
I am using blogger but wonder what other resources are available. Do you have links to that stuff?
Also, I put in Adsense but it seems like nonsense and there is not likely to be enough traffic for a long time, if ever, to justify it. Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Twenty-seven comments and counting?! John’s
remarks on this topic are so preposterously
uninformed they best deserve embarrassed
silence.
Let me guess. John also believes Social Security
is in a crisis only privatization can fix, U.S.
troops found WMD in Iraq, Saddam Hussein helped
plan the 11 September attack, secretly paying
Administration flacks taxpayer dollars to flog
its policies is good government, paying bloggers
to try to unseat Dems like Tom Daschle is fine
(else why no outcry over that revelation?), and
investors shouldn’t mind if WSJ reporters operate
like Fox, Sinclair, et al pseudojournalists.
How else to explain the his lapse of judgment
regarding the severely flawed WSJ article?
Take a look, e.g., at the must-read posting
on http://www.blogforamerica.com/archives/005807.html#872865">the way the WSJ put the story together
by DFA’s Laura Gross, who the WSJ interviewed
on background.
Dear psycho Downtown boy..just to add to your worldview let me assure you I do not like this crowd messing with SS in any way. The way I see it the crowd that wants to fix social security is the same group that fixed Iraq. No thanks. But you can live with whatever delusion that fits (as in koniption) you.
gub, gub, gub. Thanks for playing!!! HONK!
Democracy is messy, blogs are too. Blogs have order and freedom. The blog is just a medium. The medium is messy, so what. The whole Internet is messy, but it keeps working. The worst thing for the Internet is corporate domination. Google is making a fortune, Yahoo is and all the big corporate shots want to call the shots. They can’t, so how frustrating this must be. Microsoft is beefing up their MSN search. This pushes Google to do something, anything. If we all had the same computing power our tax dollars have paid for the government to have, who would really need Google? Wait Google is free, just like us. Where’s my billion dollars Larry? Don’t know Moe. Why not call it all McGoogle and you want fries with that? So we Google and think ah how high tech we are. We buy stock but we are still the outs. It’s fast, it bigger than General Motors. It changes everything. Life is good, it’s getting better. Time for the annual Playboy interview. How about a girlies of Google spread. My people will get with your people. Love you sweetheart. The ins make out better. The outs envy the ins. Google isn’t messy, yet. So then we try our own gimmicks, we try charting it, proving it and then verifying it. God must be sitting back laughing at us, maybe with us. The stock is falling, the sky is falling, call the SEC. The SEC isn’t messy, they can chart it. It’s limited and limiting. Regulations and order, big classic building, pillars stone bureaucrats. The works. These guys have real reliable computers, big redundant power supplies, Linux, job security all kinds of security and it goes 9-5. Bankers hours, bankers suits, eastern standard time Washington, not like Seattle or the left coast. Presbyterians at country clubs, no virtual golf or gold. Paper and ink, sign here________________. The power center, no funky high tech campus, slanted building, graveyard shifts, programmers living on java creating another dotcom boom. That went bust once. History repeats itself, my stock crashed, my life crashed, they towed away the Bimmer. Amend the filing, our VC owns a law firm in LA. He’s a connected guy, in Washington, backs right wing radio, only needs half his brain. The other half is busy with a centerfold. He drives a Benz, uses Google, owns a million shares, he’s a big time political donor. His wife left him, it got messy. I do meant I might. Guy wears $90 shirts and his jeans cost a cool grand. The ring was 3 million, she kept that and the place in Florida too. People are starving, the land is sliding and the world is getting messier. A corporation started sliding today. Who cares, commerce is messy? Capital is messy. People get an inflation brainstorm and there is only one way to get it out of their blood. Let it collapse! Pay me now or pay me later. I need paid, you need paid. Hell Dan Rather made more than little old me and look what happened. Dan is sorry, it wasn’t neat. Dan seems rich, must have a few million left. This will pass. Dan didn’t screw it all up, it was the staff. Heads will roll. Eyes start to roll. It’s only rock and roll, but I like it. But this is ecommerce, messier and faster with a back beat that’s hard to master. Let me tell you about Texas radio and the big beat. You can’t Google it, yet. Blogs are messy, the world is messy. We want it to be neat, easy and fast like a cheeseburger. Be cool and remember you can’t have it all. Capital is like nature, it ain’t digital. You can’t chart it, it’s not neat.