Blog Traitor, J'Accuse!

I have been accused of selling bloggers down the river for my post about the whole campaigns-hiring-bloggers thing. I don't really see how it's a betrayal to bloggers to ask if it's smart for campaigns to hire them, and plenty of other more prominent bloggers than I are asking the same questions. It's not a matter of campaigns who hire bloggers being bullied by the right, it's a question of smart campaign strategy generally--for Democrats or Republicans. Every single person that a campaign hires reflects on that candidate. The presumption is that not only do all staffers and consultants agree with the candidate fundamentally on the issues, but that the candidate necessarily agrees with their consultants and staffers on fundamental issues as well. If a particular consultant or staffer has a well-documented set of publicly expressed opinions that may contain controversial statements with which the candidate strongly disagrees, the smart move would be to be aware of those as part of the vetting process. This is true if we're talking about hiring a blogger, hiring a radio talk show host, hiring an occasional TV pundit, hiring a reporter or op-ed writer, or hiring a former candidate or public official. It's true whenever you hire anyone whose previous political positions and activities are a matter of public record. It's just the reality of the modern political landscape in which every single thing that can be researched by the public or the new media (or the old media) is automatically fair game. I didn't make the rules, but now everyone who's smart will learn to play by them.

Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice asks a lot of the same questions I did about whether hiring bloggers to do blog outreach on behalf of the campaign will be effective and worth the PR headaches that might come with it:

The irony is that, from this writers’ standpoint, the fuss over a blogger and his/her past writings obscures one fact. If you write a weblog and get a press release or email from another blogger working for a campaign and promoting it, it does not influence what’s written — or even read. We routinely get emails from candidates and read some, don’t have time for others but we know what they are: campaign press releases presenting one side in the best possible light. If so-and-so from X blog on the left or right sends us a press release or a request to link info favorable to a candidate, it won’t make a bigger difference than if Harvey Schmidlap who isn’t a blogger will send one for his candidate.

...

Be forewarned: it’s likely to happen now to all bloggers who want to join campaign staffs of any party. The bar has been moved with a little less freedom and opportunity now for bloggers — unless those with ambitions beyond “hey, do you want to exchange links” start to temper their words and language realizing that, more than ever, anything you write can and will be held against you. A blogger getting hired for a high-profile campaign staff was easier on Feb. 8, 2006.

He's right. We are in the information age and one of the results of being a blogger is that the things you say are preserved and can be used against you if politically or personally expedient for others to do so. We should all go into this knowing that to be the case, and make the decision personally ourselves whether to self-censor for that reason (as I often do to avoid criticism in case people I work with read the blog) or take the risk that a particularly pointed or controversial post may be used, fairly or unfairly, to inflict consequences in the future. Again, I don't make the rules, I just observe their existence.