Those Who Can, Blog; Those Who Can’t, Teachout

Well now, it appears that “Zonkette” is causing quite a brouhaha. Atrios and others have more than adequately explained the fact that Jerome and Kos disclosed everything they needed to disclose and any comparison with Armstrong Williams accepting a quarter of a million taxpayer dollars under the table is some kind of cosmic joke. But the damage is done.

Here we are in the midst of a huge ethical scandal in the right wing noise machine, and out marches Zephyr Teachout, goddess of the left blogosphere, with a salvo virtually designed to provide the SCLM with one of their patented false equivalence arguments. And, lucky for us, it serves to marginalize the left blogosphere at the very moment that the righties are being feted like princes in the salons of the Mighty Wurlitzer as right wing heroes! What excellent timing.

However, I think that the most disappointing thing about her post is the fact that the Dean campaign thought they were buying Jerome and Kos’ loyalty by signing them on. The Dean campaign was supposed to be the new paradigm of grassroots activism being brought into the process on a national level and working for the common good instead of their own tired careerist aims. (Indeed, I thought this was actually the raison d’etre of the campaign and why Dean was running for DNC chair.) I don’t know Kos or Jerome personally, but I certainly know their writings quite intimately and I would stake my life that they were deeply and personally committed to the Dean candidacy and would have walked on hot coals to get him elected regardless of any renumeration. But, if they had had a serious disagreement with the campaign, I would also bet my life that any contract they signed for technical advice would not have stopped them from leaving. It’s called personal integrity and I thought that’s what the Dean campaign was supposed to be all about.

The idea that the insiders quietly thought that could keep them in line with a few bucks is so seriously insulting that I’m having to reevaluate my endorsement of Dean for DNC. It shows absolutely no understanding of how the netroots works and if they actually used this crass Republican-style formula to deal with sincere activists like Kos and Jerome then there is zero hope that they can reform the party when faced with jaded lifetime political careerists in DC.

The larger question of blogger ethics in and of itself is a red herring. It’s suddenly a “concern” of the SCLM and by extension the halls of academe, because they are taking heat from us — and people are listening — and they don’t like it. Sadly, the only bloggers who are going to be restrained by these concerns are on the left. The right wing bloggers are now a fully accepted part of the Right Wing Noise Machine — positioned in the dumb mainstream media’s collective lizard brain as fearless wild west mavericks defying the establishment. Their “ethics” are the same as any other right wing media — non-existent.

So the left blogosphere will be the focus of this crusade for online ethics. We don’t have institutions like the Claremont Institute who can hire us on as “fellows” — and launder Republican money through it to pay us. We aren’t going to get our marching orders and talking points through the coordinated “left wing” media because there is no coordinated left wing media. We are out here on our own, and when or if we say or do something controversial, there is no institutional defense of us because there is no institution. Certainly, we aren’t going to get paid big bucks to be a member of the team.

So fuck a “code of ethics.” It will only serve to marginalize us.

All we really have, and ever had, is our credibility with our readers as opinion writers and committed activists. We shall have to measure all of our decisions based upon personal integrity and issue a blanket call of caveat emptor. It’s all there is. And, frankly it’s all we need. Because despite what some people seem to believe, there is no code of ethics to explain Judith Miller or Lisa Myers. The PR Flack “professional” organization stood up for Armstrong Williams. Even such things as the military code of honor has been stood on its head by aging Naval Officers and deviant interrogators just this past year.

Please tell me what these “codes of ethics” really mean because I’ve got to tell you, the minute I see one these days, I have to laugh out loud.

Update: It seems that my remarks about the Dean campaign have stirred the troops in defense. I just got three e-mails saying that I was a fool to abandon Dean for DNC because of this. Some commenters have said something like it as well.

This is why I endorsed Dean in the first place (last June!) for DNC. The loyalty he inspires among the grassroots is a powerful force for good in the party. So, ok, as if it matters at all, I am still for him. However, I would certainly hope that his devoted followers hold his feet to the fire on these matters. I don’t hold him personally responsible for Teachout’s apostasy, but he should be aware that this kind of attitude is a killer in the netroots. Bloggers aren’t whores, they’re partisans. It’s a huge difference.

Update II: Responding to a commenter, my comment about the “PR Flack” organization standing up for Williams was wrong. The PR Agency organization stood up for Ketchum, the agency that paid Williams under the table. A different PR organization thoroughly condemned Armstrong. Here’s the story, from the NY Times:

Yesterday, in a rare rebuke, Judith T. Phair, the president and chief executive of the Public Relations Society of America for 2005, condemned the decision by Mr. Williams to, as she put it, promote the law “without revealing that his comments were paid for by a public relations agency under contract to the government.”

“As public relations professionals, we are disheartened by this type of tactic,” Ms. Phair said in a statement on the Web site of the organization (www.prsa.org), which represents 20,000 people working in public relations, public affairs and corporate communications.

“Any paid endorsement that is not fully disclosed as such and is presented as objective news coverage,” Ms. Phair said, is a violation of the group’s code of ethics, “which requires that public relations professionals engage in open, honest communications and fully disclose sponsors or financial interests involved in any paid communications activities.”

[…]

The group’s members are individuals who work in public relations and related fields rather than the agencies themselves.

The agencies’ trade association, the Council of Public Relations Firms in New York, also has an ethics code, but Ketchum did not violate it, the council president, Kathy Cripps, said.

“Public relations needs to express total accuracy and truthfulness,” Ms. Cripps said. However, she added, referring to Mr. Williams, “it was the spokesperson’s responsibility to disclose the affiliation” rather than Ketchum’s.