Election officials examine blogs' role in campaigns

[paineinthearse]

Thanks to Danny Schecter for recommending this article.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5483344.html

startribune.com

Last update: June 30, 2005 at 7:05 AM
Election officials examine blogs' role in campaigns
Eric Black
Star Tribune
Published June 30, 2005

Is the Internet breathing new life into democracy by empowering citizens to air political opinions, or will it morph into a zillion-gigabyte loophole that unravels campaign finance reform? The Federal Election Commission (FEC) confronted those questions at hearings that concluded Wednesday. A judge has ordered the FEC to consider how the Internet should be treated under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Bloggers and their readers are worried that the FEC's final answers, in the form of new regulations, will chill the free-wheeling atmosphere of the blogosphere.

What's the background? The McCain-Feingold law was written without understanding how big e-mail and Internet politicking might become. In 2004, the first presidential election under the new campaign-finance law, the FEC took a hands-off approach as the Internet emerged as a major force in politics -- and political fund-raising. The law was designed to limit corporations, labor unions or millionaires from overwhelming elections with their wealth. Unions and corporations can no longer contribute directly to campaigns. Individuals are limited to giving $2,000 per campaign. They can give larger amounts to independent political groups, but those groups cannot coordinate their activities or messages with a candidate's campaign or buy ads directly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate.

The news media are an exception. One exception to those rules: a news media corporation. A newspaper, television or radio network can spend as much as it wants on political coverage and broadcast or publish whatever they wish about politics. Its reporters' conversations with campaigns also are unregulated, and editorial writers can advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Bloggers of the left and right, who don't agree on much, testified this week that the FEC should rule that blogs are part of journalism.

So what's the problem? Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, says that if the FEC considers every blogger a journalist, wealthy individuals and organizations will exploit that definition to evade the campaign-finance law. In an interview, Darr sketched out this scenario of how such a move could destroy the fabric of McCain-Feingold: Suppose Halliburton, a corporation with close ties to the Bush-Cheney ticket, set up a blog to help their ticket win. If the blogger had journalistic status, there would be no limit on what the corporation could pay the blogger or spend bankrolling the blog's activities. There would be no restriction on coordination between the blog and the Bush-Cheney campaign.

more.....

Eric Black is at [e-mail].

[UpInArms]

1. big bad corporations are afraid, very afraid

that they won't be able to completely pollute the public discourse with their corporate whore spew.

[shraby]

2. Also what is there to stop the corporations

from bankrolling journalists working for a newspaper, t.v. or radio.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Wow. I've been empowered all this time and didn't know it.

Now I really wish I had been more cordial in my early DU days when I was full of piss and vinegar and it took more than one DU moderator to calm me down and train me for civilized company.

[stickdog]

4. What a crock of SHIT! Blogging is as close to a meritocracy as media gets!

And TPTB can't have any meritocracies getting in their way!