Commentary by TrueDialog.org's Founder, Carl Lindemann

September 3 - A Tuna and Cat Food Casserole from the Collins Campaign

Just a follow-up today on the piece I had published in the Bangor Daily News today about blogger Lance Dutson’s role with the Susan Collins reelection campaign (see previous September 1 entry and disclosures below).

First, there appears to have been an editorial mix-up. Responding to comments from Todd Benoit, the opinion page editor, I revised two paragraphs to sharpen the argument. I also caught a factual error - I misstated Dutson's title with the Collins campaign. Unfortunately, I carried over the same misstatement made in Patrick Ruffini's comments posted on Dutson's site and quoted in my piece. In any case, I sent these changes to Benoit early Friday morning and followed up with a phone call to be sure they were incorporated into the printed version. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a miscommunication. I regret the factual error and now post the "authorized" final version here in place of the of the penultimate draft actually printed (pdf version here). Please note that paragraphs 5-8 in the BDN version are substantially reworked into two paragraphs here. I hope these changes make the issues and arguments for them clearer. 

That being said, let me further clarify those points by offering analogies to help explain the dynamics involved in "When a Citizen Journalist Becomes a Campaign Operative."

There are two issues here. The first is about whether Dutson, known as an “independent” blogger/citizen journalist, has sufficiently disclosed the fact that he has taken on a new role as the Collins Campaign’s Director of Internet Strategy. Or, to put it in the abstract, when a "citizen journalist" becomes a paid political partisan, this marks a fundamental change that brings an irrevocable journalistic conflict of interest. What is the proper disclosure for this so that visitors to his site do not mistake what is apparently his paid public relations efforts for "citizen journalism."

The second matter addressed is a policy issue as to whether it is legit to say that campaign staffers can say or do whatever they like on personal Web sites and not have it reflect on the campaign. 

For the first, I'm sure that some will want to get in a taffy pull over whether or not Dutson's limited disclosures are sufficient. That distracts attention from the ethics at stake. Let's see if we can bring those out with an analogy that shows the dynamics at play. What happens when you combine journalism and public relation? It’s like mixing tuna and cat food:.

Say you’re a small tuna fish cannery owner and you develop a strategic alliance with a nationally renowned cat food manufacturer. Suddenly, you decide it’s a good idea to mix in some of your business associate’s product with your own. What’s your responsibility to consumers?

First, it’s highly questionable as to whether your product should stay on the tuna shelf at the supermarket at all. Shouldn’t it be moved to the cat food section? Say that for some reason the store is willing to allow this “hybrid” to stay on the tuna shelf. Shouldn’t the fact that this “canned tuna fish” now contains a significant amount of cat food be featured prominently on the label?  Can you get away with just having this disclosed in small print lost on the ingredient list?  

This is the same situation here when a once-independent blogger becomes a paid political partisan and starts writing extensively on his own site about his candidate/patron. First, Dutson’s commentary about the campaign belongs on the candidates’ site – not on his site  known for providing “independent commentary.” Since he insists on mixing in partisan campaign spin alongside his other commentary, he needs to be upfront about his financial ties to the campaign. Visitors should not have to hunt for this disclosure.

Now, as far as the second issue, what are the policy implications of claiming that campaign staffers can offload attacks on the rival campaign without it reflecting on their own?  Imagine if a neighbor decides to take care of someone’s attack dog in their backyard while putting their prized poodle on the porch. When the complaints come in about the dog howling out back, the neighbor points to the poodle and declares, “This is my dog.”

Is that legit? Is this how we want our political campaigns to operate - the "official" campaign puts on a public face of being proper and principled while the smear campaign is conducted at arm's length. 

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