Why I'm all worked up about the Edwards bloggers
There are two things about this issue that bother me:
1. Marcotte and McEwen may be controversial. But much worse has been written on the Internet by anonymous bloggers who publish unsourced assertions and vile speech while hiding behind pseudonyms. (I mention some local examples here, here and here.)
2. Republican Senators like John McCain and John Thune have also employed controversial bloggers. They got away with it because they kept their relationships secret, and were never questioned by a credulous media.
In the end, the debate is larger than John Edwards. If the radical right and the mainstream media have their way, honest, controversial commentary may disappear. In its place will be the deceitful, anonymous, clandestine Internet of John McCain and John Thune. And that'd be a very ugly Internet indeed.
(Media Matters: 1, 2, 3, 4)
1. Marcotte and McEwen may be controversial. But much worse has been written on the Internet by anonymous bloggers who publish unsourced assertions and vile speech while hiding behind pseudonyms. (I mention some local examples here, here and here.)
2. Republican Senators like John McCain and John Thune have also employed controversial bloggers. They got away with it because they kept their relationships secret, and were never questioned by a credulous media.
In the end, the debate is larger than John Edwards. If the radical right and the mainstream media have their way, honest, controversial commentary may disappear. In its place will be the deceitful, anonymous, clandestine Internet of John McCain and John Thune. And that'd be a very ugly Internet indeed.
(Media Matters: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Labels: Amanda Marcotte, blogging and blogs, John Edwards, John McCain, John Thune, Melissa McEwan, punditry
1 Comments:
This can only mean one thing: I'm never going to get hired again.
:-)
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