A couple of Philly area bloggers are in DC talking to Congress about blogging and whether or not it constitutes a political contribution or a collaboration with a campaign if a blogger promotes a candidate and / or received compensation for it. PhillyFuture has a good posting on it which you should read as I'm not sure I've explained it clearly enough.
I did want to make clear, though, that at no point in my illustrious career as a blogger has anyone attempted to buy my influence. Let me speak plainly, no one has tempted me with M&Ms (plain or peanut, but not the peanut butter ones), red licorice (strawberry, not cherry), onion rings (batter-dipped, fried until golden brown and slightly crisp, served hot), a subscription to the Wall St. Journal (which I sometimes get free for one reason or another and enjoy but am too cheap to pay for), or bookstore gift cards (any major chain, Amazon also accepted). No one has offered to come by and clean our the gutters or mop the kitchen floor. No one has offered to play Clue with a pre-literate child who must go find a sibling or the other parent to mark her slip or read her cards every single time and make a game that should be over in 30 minutes last an hour and a half.
In fact, no one in politics has offered me anything, although I get ASKED for money quite often. I just wanted to make sure you understood that my integrity was intact.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Bloggers in DC
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3 comments:
Rep. Cohen, I am honored by your comment. Thank you for taking the time to visit, and also for having your own blog that provides information on state legislation.
Your points are well-taken, but we all need to keep in mind that professional journalists have a code of ethics to follow but bloggers do not. PhillyFuture had a posting not long ago on the Bayosphere's suggested guidelines for citizen journalists but it did elicit much response.
If we want the same protections as journalists we need some of the same guidelines. All political and corporate affiliations should be revealed when discussing relevant topics. No libel. Confidentiality of sources. Try to have two confirmations for any piece of information.
Right now anything goes and that can be a problem. I see a lot of things posted in blogs that just astound me. It may be a generational thing. It may be a mindset that only certain people are seeing what we post. It may be a lack of forethought. But we do need to address this issue.
Thank you again for your visit.
Rep. Cohen,
I think we agree but are coming at things from different angles. I'm not in favor of government regulation of blogging in and of itself, but bloggers can't break existing laws and expect there to be no consequences.
If a blogger is the employ of a campaign and uses the blog to advance that campaign, their employment should be listed on a campaign finance report.
In regard to standards, people do change how they blog to reach more people. The rat**** diary recently became the ratbang diary because some aggregators would not include it under the old name. When I originally started this blog I purposefully did not indicate where in the state I lived. However, it became clear that I would get a larger readership by connecting with Philly Future, so I have indicated I live in the Philly area.
As for people fictionalizing their lives, there are consequences for that as well. Someone I know has a co-worker who is a very indiscrete blogger. She is currently looking for a partner on a project and few people are interested in working with her, in part because they don't want to show up negatively in her blog. Can't blame them.
Philly Future has indicated that they are worried about new legal regulations on photos. If those who sign on to Philly Future dont' want to make some changes Philly Future may shut down, and that would be bad, yes?
Rep. Cohen,
You would have to ask Karl at PF about the specifics. He posted on it last month or so. A recently passed or introduced bill or court case fuzzily stated that even aggregators had to have on hand information stating that all photos that went across their sites, especially those of the adult variety, were of legal adults. Given the nature of some of the blogs on the PF blogroll this might be tricky. There are a lot of photos out there and PF would probably have to have one or two people on staff doing nothing but monitoring photos. As it is currently a volunteer venture this is unlikely.
Personally I doubt they could be held responsible, but they are worried and if I were them I would be too. It has been suggested that they have guidelines that people follow or get booted off but I think the PF crew is unhappy about the possibility of having to do that.
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