A journalism professor once told my class a story about how he was invited on a radio show and was asked to express his opinion regarding a subject. He hesitated at first but then, true to his years of experience, he declined – saying that he’ll state the facts but his opinion “did not matter.”

That’s the training of a good journalist – state the facts and not the opinions. A good journalist is supposed to report each side as well as he or she can without getting involved. To do this, they tend to analyze the “big picture” of issues – interviewing each side and spending a lot of money and time getting it right.

In an era where funding is growing ever scarce, newspapers tend to slip up sometimes and ignore investigative work mainly because they simply cannot afford it. This is when sites like ProPublica are needed to dig deeper into the issues than what the big names can handle before moving on to the next day’s breaking news.

To hold it against the newspapers to not throw funding at in-depth coverage is wrong however. It’s the major point citizen journalists make against big company newspapers.

Amanda Michel, in her article, chucks out the reasons why OffTheBus – the collection of citizen journalists she was the director of – was so successful. She especially name drops one Mayhill Fowler, a 62 year old contributer to OffTheBus who picked up the “Bittergate” story when Obama mentioned the people of rural Pennsylvania as bitter folks who clung to guns and religion. Next thing you know her piece is up on the Huffington Post, which I regard as trash, and it sets off a media storm and Obama’s being branded an elitist.

Here’s why I have a problem with that.

Despite all that you’re trumpeting Ms. Michel, that was NOT news. I frankly don’t care about what Obama said and to credit yourself with starting the media storm that wasted the time of everyone in America with such a petty issue isn’t something to be proud of.

It’s annoying how everyone picked up on, especially the broadcast networks. It took ages, and many “experts” appearing left, right and center to “discuss” this oh-so horrific issue.

It would be incredible if citizen journalists could take a class or two to learn the fundamentals of actual journalism. It would also be incredible if actual journalists didn’t waste their time on “issues” like this. If I was American, and old enough to vote – I would feel betrayed by both parties.

Oh and the Huffington Post sucks.

By Jasmine Linabary, Dotcom Journalists

Mayhill Fowler, 61, was much like the others at an invite-only fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama in April 2008 in San Francisco – she was an avid support living in the Bay Area, having contributed nearly the maximum allowed, $2,300, and was holding a recorder. What made her different was that she was also a citizen journalist – a regular contributor to OffTheBus, a blog maintained by a network of 1,800 writers created by the Huffington Post to cover the the campaign (Seelye, 2008).

Fowler had secured an invite to the event because she was known to many mid-level finance officers in the campaign from her contributions (Rosen, 2008). The New York Times reported that she had not initially been invited but asked a friend if she could go and was put on the list for the last of four campaign events, a fundraiser event at a mansion in Pacific Heights. Her active contributions to OffTheBus where also well known, as she had previously written about other fundraiser events of both the Hillary Clinton and Obama campaigns (Rosen).

The fundraiser was closed to the press and Fowler was not labeled as a citizen journalist, but neither were there specifications not to blog about the event or conditions attached to the invitation (Rosen). More than 350 people were in attendance that day in California, many recording Obama’s speech using cell phones, small video cameras and flips. Even though it was a “closed-door fundraiser”, Fowler said there was an assumption that since there was an open use of recorders and an invitation to a known citizen journalist that the event was blogable (Rosen).

Fowler held her recorder out openly as Obama spoke. Initially, she recognized that he was giving his “stump” speech, one that she had heard on several occasions before, and contemplated leaving. She stayed, hoping to catch something new. And she did.

A man in the crowd said he was going to Pennsylvania that week to knock on doors for the campaign and asked what he should expect and know before he arrived. Obama had recently been through Pennsylvania on part of his “Road to Change” bus tour, his first visit to the state and its people (Fowler, 2008).

Obama started by giving talking points Fowler recognized as his typical speech about the working class, but then he switched gears:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” (Fowler).

It was the last part of that statement that rubbed Fowler the wrong way. Fowler was dismayed that Obama was confirming to wealthier Californians stereotypes of the working class and thought his comments showed bad judgment and elitist tendencies, she later said.

After the event, she was conflicted. She feared that reporting on the comments could lead to a media frenzy or be distorted and used against Obama. He had made other news during the speech about the kind of person he would pick for vice president and that he had been to Pakistan before during college. These comments Fowler posted the next day.

She thought about what to do about the comments for several days and eventually, after a conversation with project director Amanda Michel, decided it was part of her duty in covering the campaign to report on them. This was not the first time Fowler had been critical of the campaign or Obama, as her previous posts on OffTheBus had demonstrated (Rosen).

She wrote the post in a half an hour and unlike her previous posts about this fundraiser which had been in more of a hard news style, she wrote this one in a ruminating style that she would later be known by (Seelye). Fowler was concerned about contextualizing the quotes. She started the post on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania and the quotes appeared late in the story, not the way a traditional journalist would have written it, but a traditional journalist wouldn’t have gotten the story either, Rosen later wrote.

Four days later, her post “No Surprise that Hard Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter” appeared online. Fowler thought posting it on a Friday would mean less people would see it. This did not turn out to be the case.

The post drew 250,000 page views and 5,000 comments within 48 hours (Rosen). The story was picked up by AP, Reuters, and national newspapers and was the top story on Google News for a day (Rosen). The blogosphere also reacted.

The incident came to be known as “Bittergate.” Obama would soon have to justify his comments publically and Clinton responded to them, hoping they would help her in the polls against him in Pennsylvania a little over a week later. This tipped off a debate in the campaigns about the Second Amendment (Seelye).

Fowler said the Obama campaign never contested her right to report on what happened or its accuracy, though the New York Times reported that the person who sent her an invite called her after the incident and said fundraisers are always off the record. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said that while the event was closed to traditional media, it was not off the record. He said there’s an expectation now that even at private events everything will be recorded and posted (Garofoli).

Fowler was debated both as an Obama supporter and a journalist. Other supporters doubted her support for Obama, accused her of damaging his campaign and suggested she was actually a Clinton supporter (Seelye).

The heated question in journalistic circles became over whether citizen journalists have the same responsibilities as journalists or simply rights as citizens (Rosen).

Some, like Michael Tomasky at the Guardian, argued that citizen journalists ought to have a responsibility, same as journalists, to seek followup and clarification and that there should be some rules that need to be followed in reporting.

Others like Jeff Jarvis, blogger and associated professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, suggested that citizens are less beholden than journalists and that that’s a good thing.

Marc Cooper, editorial director of OffTheBus, defended Fowler on his personal blog, highlighting that the conversation should have been directed at the political implications of what Obama said rather than attacks at the reporter, or blogger, who broke the story.

Clinton ended up beating Obama in the Pennsylvania primaries, but Obama went on to take the presidential nomination for the party and eventually the White House and Fowler continued to cover his trail.

—–

Works cited

Cooper, Marc. (2008, April 16). Closed to press — not off the record. MarcCooper.com. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://marccooper.com/closed-to-press-not-off-the-record/

Fowler, M. (2008, April 11). Obama: No surprise that hard-pressed Pennsylvanians turn bitter. Huffington Post’s OfftheBus. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html

Garofoli, J. (2008, April 16). Blogger at fundraiser part of new journalism. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/16/MNJS106AG8.DTL&hw=mayhill&sn=001&sc=1000

Jarvis, J. (2008, April 17). Journalism as a control point. Buzz Machine. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/04/17/journalism-as-a-control-point/

Seelye, K. (2008, April 14). Blogger is surprised by uproar over Obama story, but not bitter. New York Times. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/politics/14web-seelye.html

Tomasky, M. (2008, April 15). Citizen-journalism’s rulebook. Guardian.co.uk: Comment is free. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2009, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/citizenjournalismsrulebook

LIBERAL MEDIA: När Arianna Huffington lanserade The Huffington Post i maj 2005 var det många som var tveksamma. Idag har sajten 3.7 miljoner unika besökare.

I år har man också börjat hyra in reportrar och starta en lokal byrå i Chicago. HuffPost – “an Internet newspaper” – består idag av en nyhetsaggregator, en rad underavdelningar (politik, underhållning osv.) och en gruppblogg som har attraherat en rad kända personer.

Under valet försökte både Hillary Clinton och Barack Obama genom artiklar på sajten blidka saijtens liberala läsare genom att bidra med inlägg. Bland annat fick Obama förklara sin relation till den extrema pastorn Jeremiah Wright.

Femtio procent av trafiken på HuffPost genereras av de politiska reportagen. Och under presidentkampanjen kombinerade sajten kommentarer med riktiga reportage från sex betalda politiska redaktörer. Därutöver skapade man projektet OffTheBus med elva tusen s.k. “citizen journalists”.

HuffPost har lyckat med en rad stora scoop under valrörelsen. Ett scoop var när Mayhill Fowler – en “citizen journalist” – rapporterade om Obamas kommentar om bittra småstadsbor som hänger fast vid vapen och religion (“cling to guns or religion”).

När John McCain under finanskrisen meddelade att han skulle avbryta (“suspend”) sin kampanj kontaktade en av reportrarna femton av McCains högkvarter i viktiga delstater och konstaterade att ingen av dem hade avbrutit sina aktiviteter.

Mer tveksamt var det när en av Huffingtons blogginlägg hävdade att John McCain – flera år tidigare – på en middag hade talde om för henne att han aldrig hade röstat på George W. Bush. McCains talesperson förnekade att så hade skett.

Arianna Huffington själv har ett brokigt förflutet. In en intressant profil av Lauren Collins i The New Yorker beskrivs hennes liv. Före detta republikan, numera liberal, tidigare anklagad för att ha plagierat texter till sina böcker om Maria Callas och Picasso, anhängare av new age och nu en inflytelserik entreprenör med sin HuffPost.

Även som konservativ stödde hon aborter och vapenkontroller och därmed var det bara en tidsfråga innan hon skulle bli desillusionerad med det republikanska partiet. Själv påstår hon att hennes politiska evolution hela tiden har byggt på uppfattningen att den privata sektorn inte ensam klarar av att lösa samhällets problem.

The pursuit of influence – the ability to command attention and to change minds – not money, seems to be Huffington’s driving quest.

Skall bli intressant att se om The Huffington Post kommer att bli lika inflytelserik nu när Arianna Huffingtons favorit intar Vita Huset i januari.

Let’s begin with some basic journalistic definitions.

Reporting based on the model of ethic neutrality is writing about the news in the traditional, accepted method professional journalist’s are known for utilizing. What this entails is reporting a story based on the factual data, striving to be objective and fair. In other words, the mere facts are presented, essentially leaving it to the individual to interpret and process the information. The journalist, in turn, is held to different standards by the public, and therefore, he must be prepared for the consequences if he is to run off-course from the inverted pyramid style.

Transparency, in contrast, involves telling your audience exactly where your loyalties lie and reporting on the subject, anyway. For instance, a journalist can choose to report on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and at the same time, mention a complete support for Barack Obama. The reader then knows that the reporter could be bringing certain biases to the forefront. The audience recognizes the information should be read with different colored glasses.

Transparency isn’t solely about exposing your personal opinions; it also encompasses revealing story sources, as well as telling the reader what you don’t know about a source and why. By being transparent, the reporter is placing all the cards on the table, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Alas, these definitions don’t apply to the meat of the Mayhill Fowler case, a “citizen journalist” for The Huffington Post’s “Off the Bus,” who was invited to a private fundraiser held by Barack Obama as a supporter (the media weren’t invited to the event), but left with Obama’s infamous “Pennsylvanian’s are bitter” comments as a professional journalist.

Why doesn’t it apply to her?

The problem with the Fowler case isn’t with the citizens, or how she decided to report her article. Seemingly, Fowler displayed transparency to the “Off the Bus” readers. She was upfront about her support for Obama and her donation to his campaign.  If anything, she put her own biases aside to report negative news on the candidate she favors.

Moreover, even if she didn’t inform her readers in the classic, neutral way, choosing instead to flood her article with commentary, she still reported on factual quotes said by Obama himself, melding both professional skills together. Being neutral and transparent are not two separate ideals. Journalists can, and will be, both.

The problem erupts with the underhanded technique she used while reporting on the Obama fundraiser.

But, first, I need to get this off my chest.

The Huffington Post is not a random blog.

It is a news website. It is run by professionals.

Mayhill Fowler is a journalist.

Whatever random label you want to throw at her to justify a hasty, circular argument that she’s merely a citizen who happens to write about news on the side– she is a journalist, and she acted as a journalist while attending this private fundraiser for Barack Obama.

But, of course, she’s labeled as a “citizen journalist” (a guise to mimic a journalist without having to follow any “guidelines.” It’s pretty brilliant) so we can sit here and rationalize her behavior; devious tactics that any professional journalist would have paid for. This label also provides reasoning for her lack of a paycheck (Fowler, if you’re reading this, you should try to negotiate some kind of payment, seriously. I mean, damn, woman! You broke that story! You opened the floodgates!), as well as her ability to donate money to presidential candidates.

[For being "citizen journalists," the "Off the Bus" volunteers all happen to write like professionals. I guess these citizens are those who have exceptional writing skills and a vast amount of experience at other outlets, but can get away with anything without the consequences of a "professional." Hmm! To me, a citizen journalist is more like...John Doe at the DNC with a blog. But I'll let the semantics go.]

Apparently, Fowler isn’t a real journalist until it’s convenient for her to be one.

If Fowler believed in transparency, she would have told the Obama camp that she is a journalist, first and foremost. Yes, a journalist! Not a random citizen! Not an Obama-Rama supporter! Not a blogger! But a journalist! And she would be attending this event as such, to report whatever she thought was newsworthy, and in turn, post the news in the
“Off the Bus” section on the hardly unknown Huff Post.

That is being transparent.

Fowler saying that she knew there was an assumed “agreement” of sorts that the Obama campaign should come before her reporting, yet deciding to report what she heard, anyway? Not so transparent, I’d say.

To be clear, the issue at hand isn’t about what Fowler reported on, in and of itself. I’m completely in support of exposing politicians for their lack of tact.

It’s her indirect and shady way of reporting, and the medium she used to report this information, where Ms. Fowler
and I part ways.

Let me put it in another way: If Fowler posted Obama’s comments on her personal Live Journal account, and it still
found its way to the main media markets, that’s acceptable. It’s the fact that she acted as a journalist for an extremely popular professional news site/blog where things get sticky because….the professionals weren’t invited.

The fact remains, she went to the fundraiser as a supporter of the campaign, and she left as a journalist.

As Michael Tomasky argues:

She got in the door because she donated money to Obama’s campaign. This is
something no beat reporter would or could do. Then she was able to take
advantage of that situation. She “showed veteran journalists” nothing,
because “veteran journalists” would not have been allowed in that
meeting! You write as if these “veteran journalists” would have heard
Obama’s remarks and kept them secret. But the point is that veteran
journalists would never have gotten through the door in the first place.

…I suppose Fowler served the public interest in the sense that, sure,
those remarks of Obama’s were revealing of something or other. But I
still say it’s a little sneaky and sleazy to be a citizen for the
purposes of making a donation, and then getting to be a journalist for
the purposes of writing it up.

I guess when we put “citizen” in front of “journalist” there’s a whole new connotation; one that lacks responsibility, honesty and consequences. Suddenly, citizen journalism sounds a bit like a young child.

(photo from: mediabistro.com)

Everyone’s fave citizen journalism political project (Mine included. Heck, I might like OTB even more than that other political project I contribute to. You know, the red one colored peach that smells like a toxic waste dump…) Queen Arianna’s OffTheBus at HuffPo is getting some serious MSM attention… AND contributors by the thousands. From the NYT, 7-23:

OffTheBus.net, the online citizen-journalist arm of the Huffington Post, celebrates its one-year anniversary this month.

Of all the new political, non-candidate sites to spring up during the last year, OTB is now probably the biggest, with 7,500 citizen correspondents. Through its growing pains, it continues to develop the technological and organizational know-how to become a force in journalism even as it challenges the standard notions of traditional journalism.

We have been charting the site’s progress throughout the campaign, with a report in October about its start-up and an interview in April with Mayhill Fowler, the correspondent who gained notoriety after reporting Senator Barack Obama’s “bitter” comments from a closed fund-raiser.

The site has evolved in several different ways. Perhaps most strikingly, OTB’s total of 7,500 citizen correspondents is up from 300 a year ago. Arianna Huffington, who helped found OTB, attributes the dramatic rise to the buzz created by Ms. Fowler’s two big scoops, first the Obama comments, then in early June when Bill Clinton lashed out at a Vanity Fair writer.

The scoops created news and also prompted intense self-reflection among traditional journalists (it’s all about us!). Had Ms. Fowler successfully pushed the envelope for campaign reporting? Or had she so fractured the rules that she set journalism back? Either way, she has become a rainmaker for OTB, the modern-day equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein inspiring hundreds of young cubs to become investigative journalists.

“The numbers started going up with Mayhill, then they accelerated,” Ms. Huffington said. “She became the poster child for ordinary citizens being able to impact the campaign.”

Full story here. My OTB video contributions/work here. Get fired up!!! Contribute yourself to OTB!!!!

O jornalista segue com aquele problema congênito em aceitar que outras pessoas (no caso, o cidadão comum) façam o seu trabalho. Ainda mais quando a “plebe” recorre a artifícios que só nós, jornalistas espertos, podemos usá-los.

Se você não entendeu, escute: hoje qualquer um pode ser jornalista, perdemos o monopólio sobre a filtragem do noticiário, é uma situação irreversível e, portanto, acostume-se a ela.

O ombudsman da Folha, Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva, toca diretamente no assunto ao lembrar o caso Mayhill Fowler, uma senhora de 61 anos que, travestida de funcionária de campanha, ouviu frases sensacionais de Barack Obama a correligionários e, depois, conversou reservadamente com o presidente Bill Clinton durante um ato público de sua mulher.

Em ambos, colheu depoimentos constrangedores e que tiveram repercussão entre os eleitores (Fowler escreve para o Off the Bus, do blog Huffington Post, um dos pioneiros na adoção de trabalho de não-jornalistas). O “Off the Bus“, por sinal, tem por trás o dedo do professor Jay Rosen, que teorizou a participação da “ex-audiência” no jornalismo atual.

Pois bem: assim como o Observatório da Imprensa, Lins da Silva entende que de alguma forma Fowler avançou o sinal ao não se identificar como jornalista diante de seus “entrevistados”.

“Ela fez um serviço público? Praticou bom jornalismo? Revelou à sociedade o que os políticos realmente pensam, mas não dizem em público? Ou foi antiética, desonesta, agiu sob a lógica de fins justificando meios? Faz sentido discutir ética jornalística nesse ambiente?”, fala ele, para logo concluir: “Se todos os valores humanos estão em xeque neste ambiente de múltiplas realidades, por que os do jornalismo sobreviveriam?” _o texto abre avaliando experiências jornalísticas virtuais no Second Life.

O que eu quero saber é o seguinte: e a febre da câmera escondida em programas como “Jornal Nacional” ou “Fantástico”? Neste caso tudo bem, não há conflito moral ou ético? Não se trata da mesma coisa?

Claro que sim. Mas o jornalista profissional pode tudo, inclusive omitir sua condição. Quando alguém faz exatamente igual, aí sim _só aí_ é um problema.

I kept telling myself I was way too busy to compose a long, thoughtful piece about AP’s supremely boneheaded, wrongheaded, counterproductive and just plain stupid move to threaten to sue bloggers who quote and link to AP stories but don’t pay AP.

But I am never, ever too busy to vote.

So please count my vote in the NO AP column. Until further notice, I won’t be quoting or linking to AP stories in this blog – even if they are written by my friends whose work deserves credit and re-distribution. And I will encourage others to do the same.

As Jack Lail notes in his blog this morning, there are several stories out about the rift, and his list doesn’t include Amy Gahran’s dandy E-Media Tidbits piece, “AP v. Bloggers: Hurting Journalism?”

But the article that held my attention this morning is written by Christopher Sprigman, an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, on the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy Blog.

Here’s his take:

… for some reason unfathomable to anyone with a lick of common sense, the Associated Press has decided that the blogs’ “quote and link” practice violates their copyrights. It’s hard to overstate what a senseless move this is for the AP. Nonetheless, it’s also true that unless everyone – the AP and bloggers alike – steps lightly here, copyright law could end up doing a lot of damage to both the blogs and the press. Let me explain . . .

Springman’s piece is worth a read and a re-read. And he has a call to action:

…We should reform copyright to require that plaintiffs in most cases be required, as an element of their prima facie case in an infringement lawsuit, to prove that they have been harmed. In a stroke, this reform would re-focus copyright on the task it is meant to perform: policing serious threats to the ability of content owners to profit from their work.

Amen!

As a veteran journalist, both print and online, I taught blogging last semester at the journalism school of University of Nevada, Las Vegas and (silly me) I taught the students that the most important issue on quotes is — or should be — all about attribution.

My playground rules for journalism include this:

• No stealing other people’s stuff

I told the students that quoting people accurately and giving them credit, on the other hand, is a good thing.

And I know at least one person at the highest levels of the Associated Press agrees with me.

I had a hallway conversation at an APME conference in 2004 with Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press. We talked about her work as a very (very) young AP reporter on the 1979 Wichita Falls, Texas tornado, one of the most deadly in U.S. history, according to NOAA.

Carroll kicked butt on the tornado story (according to eyewitnesses including my journalist husband), but she still remembers that one newspaper in Dallas used her material without attribution in their story. Twenty-five years later, it still annoyed her.

The AP started as a cooperative, to distribute and re-distribute reporters’ and photographers’ work around the world.

As a young print reporter, I remember how thrilled I was when the AP picked up my stories. One article I wrote was distributed by the AP to three continents with my name on it. I know that for sure, because I got letters from across the U.S. and Africa and Europe, including one addressed simply to “Charlotte Lucas, Dallas Newsaper, USA.” God bless the Post Office who made sure the letter found my desk at the late, great Dallas Times Herald.

So now the AP wants bloggers to pay — per word! — and to give them credit and to promise not to say anything bad about anybody? (Forgive me for saying so, but that sure sounds more like a muzzle of my free speech than a copyright license.)

So what happens when the AP picks up something written by a blogger?

Does the blogger get paid by the word by the AP?

Did the AP follow its own guidelines when it picked up quotes from blogger Mayhill Fowler about Barak Obama’s now infamous use of the word “bitter”?

Here’s what the AP wrote about what Fowler wrote:

The Huffington Post Web site reported Friday that Obama, speaking of some Pennsylvanians’ economic anxieties, told supporters at the San Francisco fundraiser: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. And they fell through the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I know. I just broke my rule.

So is the AP going to sue me for quoting them using the words they accurately quoted from a blogger?

Or are we all going to get together and figure out how to figure this out?

One of the chapters in CauseWired will cover the evolution of political campaigns in this super-wired era, from Howard Dean to the infamous “macaca” moment in the 2006 Virgina Senatorial campaign, to this year’s epic primary battle. There are plenty of great blogs and books on wired politics, so I’m not plumbing the fascinating depths of the evolution of journalism; my goal is simply to tie electoral campaigns to other causes – and to show that many of today’s young, wired consumers don’t differentiate between nonprofit activism and political activism. One of the people likely to figure in that chapter is Mayhill Fowler, the blogger and political activist who has broken two big stories on the Democratic campaign trail – and stirred up quite a bit of controversy among self-anointed professional journalists. For Fowler and a lot of activist journalists, the cause is what drives them to gather information and publish it online; impartiality is not part of their motivation – getting people to take sides is. Yesterday’s Times had an interesting profile of Mayhill, who blogs for the OffTheBus project of NYU professor Jay Rosen and blog entrepreneur Arianna Huffington. And Rosen posted his response, along with a fantastic set of links.

Jay Rosen and I had a conversation on this blog in April about the dangers of entering the unchartered territory of journalism without a clear line between public and private statements. The exchange came in reaction to a case in which Mayhill Fowler, writing for a publication Rosen co-founded called Off the Bus, published the famous “people are bitter” quote from Barack Obama despite getting into the event by donating money. In the age of youtube and blogging, the question goes, who decides what’s fair game for publishing?

My concern is that in a society where anything that’s happening is always 30 seconds and a few clicks away from being public, the trust of privacy that holds so many communities together will be a more fragile, more often violated thing. We should, I argued, try to sort out the ambiguities of an all-publishing society or pay the price. Jay responded that people’s basic sense of right and wrong would be the ultimate guide, and that the correct journalistic choice would just be a matter of reasonably sorting out that question, not one of journalistic guidelines. I persisted in my concern with the ambiguity, he challenged me to propose a specific ambiguous situation, and I basically couldn’t. I didn’t feel at ease, but his point was well taken. (I’d encourage folks to read the exchange and let me know if they think I’ve characterized it fairly).

But Mayhill Fowler wasn’t done just yet. Last week, she broke news again:

A 61-year-old woman elbows her 5-foot-2-inch frame to the front of the crowd mobbing Bill Clinton after a campaign event in South Dakota. As Mr. Clinton shakes her hand and holds it tight, she deftly draws him into a response to an article on the Vanity Fair Web site that examines his post-presidential life. “Sleazy” and “slimy” are among the words that issue from the former president’s mouth. Within hours, audio of the three-minute exchange — including the woman’s description of the article as a “hatchet job,” and Mr. Clinton’s description of Todd Purdum, the author and a former reporter for The New York Times, as “dishonest” — is available for the world to hear on the Huffington Post Web site. [...]

While her digital audio recorder was visible in her left hand during that encounter last Monday, she says, she did not believe Mr. Clinton saw it. “I think we can safely say he thought I was a member of the audience,” she said in a telephone interview on Friday.

The same question arose. Did Fowler break any journalistic rules and did that violation indicate anything about the vulnerability of our unchartered territory?

The Times story concludes with a quote from Jay:

“In the interest of full disclosure, it would have been better if she said, ‘Mr. President, I’m a blogger from Off the Bus and I have a question,’ ” Mr. Rosen said. “I also understand the situation she’s in, he’s on a rope line, and it’s crowded and there are people shouting at him.”

“We didn’t anticipate exact circumstances like this,” Mr. Rosen added. “We didn’t think up guidelines for what to tell her in a situation like this.”

Now, I don’t pull the quote to say “I told to you so” (although after doubting myself, it’s good to know I wasn’t being ridiculously paranoid). I don’t think this latest episode is a particularly severe example of what I’m talking about (Bill Clinton should really know he’s on the record all the time by now). But I pull the quote, and restate my argument and the discussion that followed, to renew a call for a serious conversation about how we sort through this. Not just for projects like Off the Bus, but for all of those who will follow in its newly blazed path.

I couldn’t think of an example, but clearly they exist. So my failure of imagination just shouldn’t be the end of our effort to sort this out. The old rules of journalism were often designed, after all, for good reasons. Yes, often times they’re abused by a ruling class that plays with them for money and power, but they served a purpose.

New rules, that embrace transparency from both the journalist and the subject and respect some line of privacy, need to be ironed out. Not by me, or Jay, or the NYTs or Mayhill Fowler. But in a conversation amongst us all (mostly them all, because I can’t claim any special insights into answers) that prefigures the kind of journalism we’re hoping to see.

Mayhill Fowler, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post’s Off The Bus citizen journalism project, broke some big-time news over the course of the Presidential primary season. From today’s LATimes:

Tim Russert, Katie Couric or Larry King eventually may deliver telling blows of their own, but score Round 1 in the contest to extract the most provocative presidential campaign quotes to . . . Mayhill Fowler?

The 61-year-old self-described “failed writer” and amateur Web journalist helped create two of the most unexpected moments in the 2008 election — most recently on Monday, when she recorded former President Clinton’s fiery denunciation (“slimy,” “dishonest”) of Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum.

That scoop came six weeks after Fowler rocked the Democratic race for president by reporting (from a “closed press” fundraiser in San Francisco) Barack Obama’s now infamous discussion of “bitter” small-town Americans who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

Full story here. Local video contributors to the Off The Bus project include Shelby Highsmith and me.

Washington Post: Mayhill Fowler says she never planned to ask Bill Clinton the question that unleashed a decidedly unpresidential tirade.

But in the crush of the crowd in South Dakota last Monday, when she raised the topic of “that hatchet job” on him in Vanity Fair, the former president called the article’s author “slimy,” “sleazy” and a “scumbag,” tightly gripping Fowler’s hand the whole time. “I’m sure he had no idea who I was,” the 61-year-old Tennessee native says.

He quickly found out. Fowler is a Huffington Post blogger whose audiotape of the exchange exploded across the media landscape, prompting Clinton to apologize for his language. And the episode came just two months after Fowler rocked Barack Obama’s campaign by reporting his comments at a closed fundraiser that “bitter” small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion.”

• More From McCain’s Keystone Cops: McCain campaign’s latest attack is that Obama “wants to return to the failed policies of the 60s and 70s.” This charge from the man who just dusted off Barry Goldwater’s 1963 debate proposal earlier this week. Obama was born in 1961 — is McCain asserting Obama spent his formative years memorizing the tax and energy policies of President Johnson, when he wasn’t outside riding his tricycle?
• Scott McClellan has accepted Chairman Conyers invitation to testify before his House Judiciary Committee, primarily about the Valerie Plame outing cover-up by the White House.
• Obama’s Campaign Strategy Already Working. Obama plans to expand the electoral map and force McCain to defend red states he can’t afford to spend resources defending. To this end, Obama launched his general election campaign in Virginia last Thursday. So where is McCain campaigning today? Virginia! McCain’s campaign said he’s not taking Virginia for granted and will be returning for more campaigning. (Meanwhile, Obama spent today in North Carolina).
• Politico’s shocking revelation: rising gas prices could hurt McCain!
• Congress discovers Bush White House lied about Bush’s meetings with Abramoff.
• Obama’s Unity Bounce beginning to show in Gallup, where he opens his biggest lead ever against McCain, 48-42%.
• Representatives of former Hillaryland fly to Chicago for a meeting with Team Obama to discuss (1) Hillary’s role at the convention, (2) how to use Hillary during the general election, and (3) beg for help with debt relief.
• In Raleigh, North Carolina today, Obama ties McCain’s proposed economic policies to Bush, and defines them as even a step back from Bush’s disastrous economic policies. He’s joined by John Edwards and several governors (including former Hillary supporter Governor Easley (D-NC)). Obama also announces Elizabeth Edwards will have a prominent role on his health care efforts. Read full remarks here.
• As Obama launches his economy tour in NC, MO, OH, PA and FL, WSJ notes that voters rank the economy as the number 1 issue.
• Newsweek learns that Obama’s recent confrontation of Senator Lieberman on the Senate floor apparently was over Lieberman’s role in spreading the “Muslim” slander to Jewish voters, and the sowing of other doubts about Obama in the Jewish community. Newsweek suggests Hillary’s campaign also had a role. Obama has had a long history in Chicago of strong support from the Jewish community. Obama had actively supported Lieberman’s difficult reelection effort in CT in 2006.
• The Chicago Tribune profiles Obama’s low profile campaign manager, David Plouffe.
• WaPo: George Bush is convinced he’ll go down in history as a great leader.
• NY Times: Despite McCain’s aggressive courtship, evangelicals are still playing hard to get. Article also notes that Obama plans to target moderate evangelical voters aggressively, including with faith-oriented house parties.
• Bob Novak also finds that McCain has a strained relationship with the evangelical community.
• Obama and McCain both reject offer by ABC News to sponsor town hall debate in NY. Campaigns don’t want a single network to sponsor the debates, but want them open to all media.
• Some in the GOP hope that McCain will pick the young, inexperienced, right wing Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as his VP. Fingers-crossed.
• Howard Kurtz profiles hack “citizen blogger” Mayhill Fowler, who wrote the biased hit piece on Obama’s SF fundraiser and more recently a “gotcha” piece on Bill Clinton.
• Politico: McCain and Obama couldn’t be much more different from each other.

• Andrew Sullivan on McCain’s speech, spot on. His new slogan, “A Leader You Can Believe In” shows that, like Hillary, (1) he can’t seem to settle on a slogan and (2) he thinks we are stupid enough that transparently co-opting Obama’s message will fool us. He also continues to come across as a bitter, angry, condescending, sarcastic guy that can’t believe he has to campaign against this young whipper snapper.
• New York Observer, a small elitist newspaper, to “endorse” Hillary as Obama’s VP. Ugh.
• Hillary tells NY legislators that she is “open” to being Obama’s VP. Apparently, she brought the subject up. As in, “Hey, do me a favor, tell all your friends I’m open to being VP.”
• Hear an audio clip of the interview with Bill Clinton that elicited his angry response about the author of the Vanity Fair article about him. The interviewer, Mayhill Fowler, is the same person who wrote the biased article about Obama that resulted in the “bittergate” controversy.
• AP: Obama has effectively clinched nomination based on its own tally of superdelegates.
• Senator Feinstein, a major backer of Clinton, says it’s time for Hillary to concede.
• Montana’s superdelegates prepared to endorse winner of MT primary as soon as “he” is declared (Obama is expected to win). The governor and both senators are Democrats.
• Jimmy Carter to endorse Obama.
• Drip, Drip, Pour. Obama is withing approximately 10 delegates of the nomination, having just picked up 9 former Edwards superdelegates and two former Clinton superdelegates. At this point, he is close enough to suspend the endorsements, assuming he’d rather have the pledged delegates put him over the top to create his American Idol moment during prime time.
• AP: Hillary to concede tonight that Obama has enough delegates to secure nomination. She will suspend, not terminate, her campaign (like Edwards after Super Tuesday) in an effort to maintain some leverage to push for her pet issues, like universal health care, but she will let her campaign staff go and fold her campaign. UPDATE: McAuliffe is breathlessly telling cable nets that AP story is incorrect.
• WSJ: Leon Panetta, Madeleine Albright, Patti Solis Doyle, key Clinton campaign staff and major fundraisers among those expected to join Team Obama very soon.
• Chicago Tribune: At least 25 superdelegates poised to endorse in groups over the couse of the day in advance of tonight’s election results.
• NY Times/The Caucus – Clinton unlikely to challenge Michigan decision. Hillary’s speech tonight not expected to be a formal concession — but a bridge to such an event that could occur later this week, possibly as early as tomorrow.
• Dick Cheney cracks a West Virginia incest joke relating to the fact that he has ancestors named Cheney on both sides of his family history. His joke infuriates West Virginia state officials from both parties. Lost in the joke is perhaps some explanation for his aberrant behavior.
• Senator Claire McCaskill says she’s counted votes among the uncommitted superdelegates and confirmed that Obama will have enough superdelegates to give him the nomination Tuesday night.
• WaPo agrees that Obama should clinch the nomination Tuesday night.
• WaPo’s Fact Checker spots many of the flaws in Hillary’s assertions she made in her victory speech in Puerto Rico.
• NY Times explains Hillary Math:

  

• Clinton campaign privately telling donors that they will not quit before August and have plans to fight onward beyond this week.
• Bill Clinton is angry and lashing out. He also calls author of new Vanity Fair article about him “sleazy” and a “scumbag.” The author is also the husband of Clinton press secretary, Dee Dee Myers.
• Some advisers to McCain are arguing that he should follow the example of the late, great President Polk and declare that he will only be a one-term president. Of course, there’s absolutely no risk that kind of announcement will be construed as a lack of confidence in your own judgment and capability as a president in mid-70’s,
• NY Times: Obama made concerted effort to whip a sufficient number of superdelegate votes.

Adam was amazed to read this story on the NZ Herald site today. It was one picked up from the London Observer and was about Mayhill Fowler who was the lady who blogged about Barack Obama’s remarks at an event in San Francisco which sparked the ‘controversy’ over the ‘bitter’ remarks.

Amazed because he thought this was old news, though the Herald is running this under today’s date.

Amazed again because Adam had blogged on this item under the title Blogging: influencing US Primary Campaigns last Tuesday the 15th April 2008. At that time the item was already some days old.

This is old news and he thinks the NZ Herald needs to get a bit more current, and certainly make the timeline clearer if they are going to pick up old stories.

Now Adam’s readership is nowhere the size of the Herald’s but he does think they could be a bit more upfront on the timeline, especially in the world we live in today and the fact that with the internet many of us do read publications other than the NZ Herald.

Incidentally, the NZ Herald is not the only news outlet that does this, he has noticed other publications and media do the same on occasion.

It’s funny how you start to view your own daily, professional life through the eyes of this blog.

That, every now and again, a penny that’s dropped in theory, drops in practice. It did so again this afternoon in the unlikely surroundings of Archbishop Sancroft High School in Harleston. Why any of us were there in a mo; first to retrace our steps – or rather re-enter the ‘Who, exactly, is a journalist?’ fray and why, to my mind, Mayhill Fowler isn’t.

Who is Ms Fowler? Her moment of blog fame arrived last week and was siezed upon by Jay Rosen, among others, as a shining example of the new world order.

Neil McIntosh provides a good an entry point as any; albeit I would take issue with the headline. Who is and who isn’t a journalist these days is a question that is fundamental to our survival; for we, as journalists, have to prove our value…

Ms Fowler proved her value once; we need to do it regularly. So it does matter. Boy, does it matter…

http://www.completetosh.com/weblog/2008/04/17/whos-a-journalist-whos-not-and-why-it-doesnt-really-matter-anyway/

All of which clearly touched upon the issues raised here…

http://outwithabang.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/here-comes-everbody-and-before-they-do-we-better-define-for-once-just-what-makes-us-as-journalists-different/

In which, we threw a new definition of journalism into the ring – that it was simply someone who enjoyed regular access to a near-private conversation… that one-hit wonders (and, fair play to Ms Fowler, it was a formidable ‘hit’) are citizen writers, not citizen journalists…

Anyway, it being mid-week, there being no Tuesday night game and media being scarce, the call goes out from the Norwich City Press office – that Messrs D Huckerby (yep, him again…) and A Drury were bound for Archbishop Sancroft High School for a Q&A with the kids in the company of Stephanie Moore, the widow of England World Cup skipper, Bobby…

That the Bobby Moore Fund was the chosen charity of the retiring head-master; that the two Canary footballers had agreed to help promote cancer awareness and, ahead of said Q&A, would be doing interviews with the Press.

OK, so far, so parochial. But, to my mind, parochial is where we’re all going.

Because there are a number of aspects to this whole, homely tale of life on the Norfolk football front-line that ought to resonate further.

The original invite to the Press came not from Norwich City, but from the school. They issued a Press release. To the Press. You had to then phone up the headmaster’s secretary to say who you were, who you worked for and whether or not you’d be coming.

She was the ‘gate-keeper’ on this occasion; just as the desk sergeant, the court usher and the parish council clerk can be on others.

A school secretary. The quotes that we need to survive on lay beyond those school gates and she wasn’t letting anyone in… it was invite only. Indeed there, when you arrived, was a little name badge. Just to prove who you were; that you weren’t just anybody; or if you’re Mr Shirky, everybody.

The headmaster didn’t want just anyone – or everybody – talking to Ms Moore. Or our Darren.

Here’s the control point; the bottle-neck. Everybody might now have access to the means of production, but ‘a journalist’s control of regular access to a near-private conversation…’ – here it was. In deepest Harleston.

Access granted, the ‘near-private’ conversation was duly held – near-private because there was the local TV, our Chris from Radio Norfolk, the girl from the Diss Express and, of course, the lad from CanariesWorld TV.

Of course, there in the audience sat any number of giggling girls and star-struck boys – all of whom would be twittering away as they sat; mobile phone cams at the ready. A veritable army of citizen journalists? No, because they have to have ‘regular’ access to that near-private conversation.

Huckerby will next be doing conversation at the club’s training HQ at Colney on Friday morning ahead of the QPR game. Class 12J won’t be invited; besides they’ve got double domestic science at 9.30…

Now, providing I haven’t trod on too many toes, put too many noses out of joint by the ‘piece’ that we weaved later… http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/full_article.asp?i=3290 … I’ll be deemed OK for another of my regular conversations with his lordship on Friday…

And, yes, you’re right. There’s a pay-back in the piece; an acknowledgement of the original invite and the favour that the school secretary did me… because there’s the headmaster’s name, there’s his school and there’s his chosen charity.

Compromised copy? Yes. It’s the price we pay; the deals we strike to get to where we need.

We journalists do that; it’s part of our trade; or rather part of our trade-off to get to our quotes, our near-private conversations.

And not ‘everybody’ can do that…

Last week it was revealed in a California fundraiser that Barrack Hussein Obama is an elitist that is out of touch with the working stiffs that make up this great country.  What you may not know is the courage of one single 61 year old woman who risked her own life and personal well-being to break that story.

Mayhill Fowler is the wife of a prominent lawyer and McCain supporter James Fowler and a distinguished Vassar alum.  Mrs. Fowler and her husband take great pride in their 43 foot yacht and multi-million dollar lifestyle, but that doesn’t stop Mrs. Fowler from caring about average working Americans.  She first got this love for the underclasses from spending time with the servants her family employed when she was a young girl and enjoying their salty and sometimes baudy stories.  Currently, Mrs. Fowler is a citizen journalist at the Huffington Post.  She also runs Odysseus Cruising which rents out a 75 foot yacht to wealthy patrons who wish to cruise the Greek and Turkish islands.

Mayhill Fowler proves the power of the citizen journalist.  Anybody with the effort and inclination can be a big help to your candidate if you don’t mind putting yourself at risk.  Ms. Fowler is also a big contributor to both the Hillary Clinton and Fred Thompson campaigns.

The Times’ Katherine Q. Seelye takes a look at the Huffington Post blogger, Mayhill Fowler, who first reported on Obama’s “bitter” comments. In the Times, her story as she believes it and professes it, is that she was doing her job as a journalist in reporting comments Obama made off the record at a fundraiser, to supporters in that region. But the story as she tells it is different: she attended as a supporter, who heard him say something she didn’t like, and she decided to go live with it.

The discourse in the article is as to whether she was disobeying or obeying a journalistic ethic, and then which one at that. What stands out to me is that she wasn’t doing her duty as a journalist at all. She was doing her job as a blogger: reporting something a journalist is kept from reporting, fighting unfair, and doing it in a personal way, typically out of one passion or another, by which we really mean rage. Her words:

“Immediately, the remarks just really bothered me…”

..Then she stewed for several days over whether to write about the comments about small-town voters. “There are no standards of journalism on the Internet,” she said. “I’m always second-guessing myself. Is this the right thing to do? Am I being fair?”

The answer is left open, in the Times article. She claims she didn’t know that after following the campaign as long as she had that she was not, if she was a journalist, supposed to report on what she heard at the closed-to-media dinner. Disingenuous, I think, but possible–as a “citizen journalist”, part of the netroots revolution of new media, with “no standards”, and as likely, no formal education in journalism. She’s what her fans hope she is, and what her new enemies fear she is–and by doing what she did, she essentially supported the idea of “no standards”, rather than keeping to one standard or the other.

It’s just as likely she knew that the closed part didn’t refer to her as a blogger in the same way (though it likely will now). And while it is surprising that the campaign didn’t know she was media, they could be understood as confused: she’d contributed 2300.00 of her own money to him. They might easily think she was a supporter.

Did she or didn’t she do her job? That’s what people are asking, and I think the answer is, Yes, she did her job: as a blogger. She also did her job as a supporter: she was critical, if supportive unintentionally: the comments themselves appear to have helped Obama there, an unforeseen possibility. His numbers are up in the aftermath, there and in Indiana (as are Huffington Post’s numbers, and Mayhill Fowler’s). Fowler might have thought he was an elitist, but the people Obama spoke of seem to be saying, Yes. We’re bitter. Thanks for noticing.

Like many people no doubt, Adam heard on the news this morning of the furore concerning comments made by Barack Obama at a fund raiser in San Francisco. he thought unfortunate for Obama, but that is politics, especially US politics for you. Then he thought no more about it.

Then reading the daily political updates on the New York Times site, he came across this article, on how the news was broken by a blogger contributing to a Huffington Post site – OffTheBus.net.

Mayhill Fowler, a blogger for OffTheBus.net, a Web site published by Huffington Post and created by Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen, was the first to report Mr. Obama’s comments — that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations.

The article gives a lot of the so called back story and inclues this comment:-

The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics. And Ms. Fowler says she is surprised that she is playing a role in this revolution.

“I’m 61,” she said. “I can’t believe I would be one of the people who’s changing the world of media.” But her experience raises questions about whether the roles, rules and expectations for journalists and bloggers are different. Can a person be both? Even Ms. Fowler acknowledged that “clearly everyone is going to be re-thinking how they handle this kind of thing.”

There has apparently been quite a lot of comment as to whether Mayhill was a Clinton plant, or whether she was unethical in blogging about the event, because she was an attendee. The article continues:-

Marc Cooper, who is the editorial coordinator of O.T.B., is writing on his own blog about the development of Ms. Fowler’s story and he acknowledged that the campaign did not want the event covered. “It was indeed a fund-raiser to which the press was not invited,” he wrote. “Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasn’t on or off the record. Off the record is when journalists consensually agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.”

Still, he wrote, “Most if not all press was kept out of the room but Mayhill was invited in. She was under no obligation not to report. Obama was indeed more loose-lipped than usual. He should be more careful in his choice of words when he is staring into so many video cams, no matter who is holding them.”

Ms. Fowler said she held her digital recorder openly. The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras. Among them, Ms. Fowler said, was a professor who was recording the event for his students. In fact, snippets of the speech have been posted on YouTube by others who were there.

Ms. Fowler started listening near where Mr. Obama was speaking but said it got so hot that she moved to the back, where she sat next to other people who were recording the event with professional equipment.

Later in the article, the reporter notes:-

Ms. Fowler said she found his response “professorial” and judgmental toward blue-collar voters and that even though she supports him, she was “taken aback” by them.

“I’m a religious person, and I grew up poor in a very wealthy family — sometimes we didn’t have enough to eat, but my larger family was rich,” she said. Her father was a hunter. “Immediately, the remarks just really bothered me. For the first time, I realized he is an elitist.”

Then further on Ms Fowler says:-

Then she stewed for several days over whether to write about the comments about small-town voters. “There are no standards of journalism on the Internet,” she said. “I’m always second-guessing myself. Is this the right thing to do? Am I being fair?”

She said she initially decided not to write about them. “I thought I wouldn’t put it out there, this really might damage his campaign,” she said. “I talked it over with my husband, and like many people, he didn’t see anything wrong with the remarks. He didn’t think it was newsworthy.”

Then she told her editor in New York that she had some interesting material but didn’t tell her exactly what it was. “Initially I resisted what she was telling me, which was that if you’re going to cover the campaign, you have to not be partial or your coverage isn’t worth as much as it could be,” she said.

As the article notes, after Ms Fowler wrote and posted the piece:-

The post created an instant storm, garnering 5,000 hits immediately, more than 50,000 more in the next few hours and topping 100,000 by the end of the day. By then, Mr. Obama himself was talking about his comments and Mrs. Clinton was activating her entire campaign apparatus to try to exploit them.

Then reaction was fast and furious and reading between the lines vehement.

The blogosphere swelled with outrage from Obama supporters. Ms. Fowler said Friday was the fourth-most memorable day of her life, after the birth of her two children and her wedding day.

Soon, the Obama Web posted a counter-description from another person who attended the fund-raiser (without the quotes). The writer gives a sympathetic explanation of Mr. Obama’s comments and writes that Ms. Fowler had an agenda; Ms. Fowler said she had no agenda except to write it as she saw it.

Mr Cooper defends his reporter thus:-

She was known to the campaign as an OffTheBus reporter and they let her in as such and she worked the room as such and she recorded the event in the open as she sat with campaign staff,” He adds: “They probably let her in because they expected her to write unblemished pro-Obama copy. Or they don’t fully understand implications of internet age information. She herself was quite conflicted about writing something potentially harmful to Obama. But she correctly decided that the truth shall set ya free.”

Adam thinks the article is worth a read. It raises some interesting issues about the changing face of reporting, the impact of blogging in the information age and what if any ethical requirements should or should not be observed.

It will be interesting to see if any parallels surface as move further into the NZ election campaign.

For example, will the parties seek to impose restrictions on attendees at party functions or meetings who are bloggers?

Will those bloggers who are activist supporters report issues such as this which emerge?

It is interesting to note that Ms Fowler was until this time an at least an Obama supporter, who had given money to his campaign and had actively followed his campaign.

]]> http://roadkillrefugee.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/daily-tidbits-april-15-2008/ Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:03:06 +0000 rkref http://roadkillrefugee.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/daily-tidbits-april-15-2008/

• New Polls for PA, NC and IN Positive for Obama.  LA Times/Bloomberg poll says Obama is leading in Indiana by 5 points, 40-35%, leading in North Carolina by 13 points, 47-34%, and down in Pennsylvania by only 5 points, 35-40%.  All represent a bounce for Obama.  Primary cause is defections of women voters from Hillary.  In addition, voters across all three states said they “admired” Obama more than Hillary.
• Obama mocks “Bitter” fuss as more of the “political silly season” and standard fare from someone who is behind in the race and desperate to “cling” to anything to get ahead.  Notes his very modest upbringing and even adult life, financially speaking.  He’s asked a question from the audience about whether the term “elitist” is code for the racist term ”uppity,” but Obama says he doesn’t think Hillary intended anything racial by the attack.
• New Survey USA poll shows 4-point bounce for Obama in Pennsylvania over last week, 54-40.  Last week Obama was down by 18-points.
• Just Recipes?  McCain campaign plagiarizes Food Network recipes as “McCain Family Recipes” in a ham-handed effort to manufacture warm & fuzzy domestic image for beer distributor heiress, Cindy McCain.
• Hillary Hysteria Backfiring?  New Gallup daily tracking poll shows largest Obama lead to date, 51-40%.  We eagerly await the MSM’s breaking news coverage of how the Gallup and the Rasmussen daily tracking polls over the last few days provide consistent evidence of Hillary’s overreach on this pseudo-controversy hurting Hillary and helping Obama.  This also shows how pundits living in Chevy Chase with three Mercedes cars in the driveway and earning $5 Million (cough, Chris Matthews) aren’t quite so in touch with the PA working class as they thought they were.
• Lanny Davis posts an interesting letter on Andersen Cooper’s blog that he received from African American attorney he served with in the Clinton Administration, Jeh Johnson.  In the letter, Johnson answers the question Davis posed in the Wall Street Journal op-ed about why an African American could stay a member of Trinity UCC church despite Rev. Wright making certain offensive remarks.
• Will the Media Accurately Report the Polls?  Or will the Hillary/GOP talking points prevail that this contrived controversy must be harmful to Obama?  Today’s Rasmussen daily tracking polls show largest Obama lead since before “bitter” fuss started last Friday, with Obama leading 50-41%.  Rasmussen’s daily general election poll also shows Obama gaining on McCain, while Hillary is slipping in her match-up against McCain.  Yesterday, both major daily tracking polls, Gallup and Rasmussen, showed widening margins for Obama (see Daily Tidbits for March 14).  These results reflect voter sentiment after the ”bitter” story broke.  The polls also showed Hillary was suffering more than Obama.  Yet this is how MSNBC’s First Read described this fact in today’s daily morning email report:  “Obama’s folks are taking comfort in the Gallup tracking which hasn’t changed.”  Hasn’t changed?  Obama’s margin in Gallup grew for the second day in the row, post-Bitter, to the widest margin since before the “Bitter” story broke, and this is reported as “no change.”  Let’s see how the MSM does today.   
• New poll by Survey USA, considered one of the most accurate pollsters, says most Pennsylvanians not offended by Obama’s remarks.
• Bob Johnson, founder of BET, says Gerry Ferraro was right that Obama’s success is “luck” because of his race. Like Bill Clinton bringing up Bosnia again, you have to wonder what benefit Hillary thinks there is from stepping back into the gutter like this.

• With Friends Like Joe Lieberman. When Lieberman was in the fight for his political life against a more liberal opponent, Ned Lamont, to whom Lieberman lost the Democratic primary, Barack Obama was there for Joe. Obama campaigned for Joe, and Joe welcomed the help. Now Joe is McCain’s wingman. When Joe was asked about Bill Kristol’s outrageous statement that Obama was like Karl Marx, Joe replied by saying Obama was to the far left of him and “mainstream America.” But as Andrew Sullivan points, out, if that’s true, what positions of Obama have changed since fall 2006 that pushed Obama to Joe’s far left? And if that were true, wouldn’t Obama have endorsed Lamont instead of Lieberman? It’s telling to see the self-proclaimed “straight talker”, McCain, surround himself with schmucks like Lieberman.
• New Quinnipaic poll of Pennsylvania shows no change since last poll, with Hillary up by 6 points, 50-44%.
• Mayhill Fowler, author of the biased “bitter” story, speaks to NY Times, but doesn’t answer many questions surrounding her story.
• Democratic candidates work to regain majority of Catholic vote lost in 2004 election.
• New Gallup poll shows overwhelming lack of confidence in current economic trajectory.

• Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Judicial Watch brings FEC complaint against Elton John’s “illegal in-kind campaign contribution” to Hillary as a foreign national.
• Politico examines Obama’s “counterpunch.”
• Geoff Davis (R-KY), the GOP Congressman who called Obama “boy” today, offered an odd apology — for questioning Obama’s integrity. Obama’s integrity wasn’t at issue. The issue was Davis calling Obama “boy.”
• Thousands of retailing chains across country caught in wave of bankruptcies.

Seems like everyone on the web is talking about this. I wasn’t going to but it has been bothering me and with the topic still so much around, I guess I’ll put in my two cents. There are things that he said that can be agreed with and things he said that others will deny. It hits people both ways. So let’s dissect this and see if we can figure it out. Obama maintains it is what he meant even if poorly worded. I agree, it is poorly worded…

From CNN’s Lou Dobbs I got a copy of what Barack Obama said on tape:

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D-IL) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been done now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration and each successive administration has said that these communities are going to regenerate but they have not.

And it’s not surprising that then they get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The first thing I will note is that this is taken out of context. We don’t know what came before this or what came after. However, the comment is fairly contained. So…

The first paragraph speaks about what is a fact. But what I don’t understand is the part where he says:”each successive administration has said that these communities are going to regenerate but they have not.”

This seems to imply something in the future. The key words being Clinton, Bush, successive administrations. BUT, this is clearly a sentence that is in past tense. At most this is a faux pas. But I don’t know what came after this short part of the speech, so I can’t say if he got around to addressing that or not. It just seems an odd way of speaking of things to me and just caught MY attention…

Obama then goes a step further in saying:

And it’s not surprising that then they get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

OK, let’s look at this closely and see what is and isn’t true, or how far I agree with it.

1)Are we bitter? Yes and No. Bitter isn’t the word I would use here but it is his word so I’m not going to change it. We are because nothing has been done to fix a problem that has been going on for 25 years. No one is paying attention. BUT, it isn’t because we don’t have CAUSE with the corruption and kickbacks these Congressmen and Women are taking, catering to big business instead of working for their constituents. We have a valid REASON for feeling as we do and Obama invalidates those feelings by that first sentence.

2)We cling to our guns; Yes, but not as a source of security but as a symbol of our freedom. As part of our Constitutional Rights. To say this in a derogatory way is to say our freedoms do not matter and our love of them is invalidated. I don’t think this is a good thing for a future prospective presidential candidate to say…

3)cling to Religion; Most people do, but not all. Some people feel spirituality inside themselves and not in a Church. By saying this does Barack Obama NOT respect religion? After the heat he took for sticking up for his Pastor? That makes no sense. So why would he say this in this way?

4)cling to antipathy;

OK, I looked up antipathy just to make sure I actually had the definition for the word correct. This is from Merriam-Webster Dictionary online:

antipathy

Main Entry:

an·tip·a·thy

Pronunciation:

\an-ˈti-pə-thē\

Function:

noun

Inflected Form(s):

plural an·tip·a·thies

Etymology:

Latin antipathia, from Greek antipatheia, from antipathēs of opposite feelings, from anti- + pathos experience — more at pathos

Date:1600

1obsolete : opposition in feeling2: settled aversion or dislike : distaste <his well-known antipathy to taxes>3: an object of aversion synonyms see enmity

OK, that’s what I thought it meant. Now, according to this Obama is saying that we have an aversion or dislike of people unlike us and I assume he is speaking of an aversion to a thing, because he cannot mean an aversion to a people? Because he says this in relation to antipathy: Americans are related to every race and people out there. This doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Now, I disagree with this. First of all LEGAL immigrants are very welcome in this country. It is the illegal immigrant here that is breaking the Sovereign Laws of the United States of America, just by being here that makes us unhappy. These people have come here illegally and are a serious drain on our resources. AND, had the issues of border security been addressed and enacted instead of making AMERICANS almost get strip-searched at the airports, OR secured out ports, WE WOULDN’T HAVE THIS PROBLEM. And this is a GOVERNMENT ISSUE, pointing fingers at corrupt politicians with greasy Lobbyists spreading money everywhere. BUT, Americans have never been against LEGAL Immigration. Never, and never would be either. We are talking about illegals here, those that break our laws just by coming here.

And what American is anti-trade? We just want FAIR trade NOT FREE TRADE. Trade that protects OUR workers as well as those of the other Country. We don’t want other people to work in sweat shops, or have to work long hours for next to nothing, or be faced with rape or murder. But we want OUR trades to be FAIR to WE The People too! It has been all big corporations and nothing for the working class. But that is not anti-trade. No, I totally disagree with this statement.

At the very least Barack Obama should explain what he means. Some parts of this are true, most others false. So he does need to come up with an explanation. The rest of the interview was an exclusive with the lady who taped this conversation. Here it is for your review.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs with KITTY PILGRIM, CNN ANCHOR sitting in for Lou::

Outrage tonight after Senator Obama blasts small-town America. The remarks could seriously damage Senator Obama’s presidential campaign. Obama made the remarks in front of wealthy donors at a fund-raiser in San Francisco last Sunday. The news was first reported by the “Huffington Post” Web site. The “Huffington Post” provided an audio tape of what Obama said.

Let’s listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D-IL) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been done now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration and each successive administration has said that these communities are going to regenerate but they have not.

And it’s not surprising that then they get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

PILGRIM: Now Senators Clinton and McCain immediately pounced on Obama’s comments. They criticized Obama for being insensitive and out of touch. The Obama campaign tried to limit the political damage as soon as this news broke.

Obama’s campaign said, “No one from our office was there. We don’t have a campaign recording. We are neither confirming nor refuting.” We will have extensive coverage tonight from the campaign trail and from the finest strategists.

We begin with an exclusive interview with “Huffington Post“’s Mayhill Fowler who broke this story.

Mayhill, thanks for joining us on the phone.

MAYHILL FOWLER, BLOGGER: You’re very welcome.

PILGRIM: Mayhill, please set the scene for us. What kind of a crowd was assembled here, first of all to set the scene, the context of these remarks.

FOWLER: This is a fundraiser, the fourth in the day. This last Sunday in San Francisco and Marin and the South Bay in California. And it was at a house in Pacific Heights. There were maybe 350 to 400 people there. Quite a crush. Quite a crowd. These were people that had maxed out their donations to Senator Obama and among that group is myself.

PILGRIM: How would you characterize them, prosperous, middle class, wealthy, what category?

FOWLER: That’s a very good question. You shouldn’t have the impression these were very wealthy donors. These were mostly middle class and upper middle class who, I’m guessing, like myself, had slowly given money over time to Senator Obama until they reached the $2,300 cap.

There was the wife of an army surgeon. There were Safeway grocery store union workers. There were professors, there were house wives, it was quite a cross-section of prosperous California.

PILGRIM: And they had maxed out their $2,300 donations.

Mayhill, you told me in a previous conversation on the telephone, you always record what you report. So you had a tape recorder going at the time. Tell us how that played out, how you had this tape recorder going. What you noticed as he was making remarks.

FOWLER: I cover the campaign for Off the Bus, for the “Huffington Post.” I’m a citizen journalist. I’ve been covering the campaign since last June, intensely since September. I had just been in Pennsylvania following the Obama bus tour from west to east across the state. So I would say his frame of mind was the same as in Pennsylvania, calm, relaxed, very upbeat, full of confidence.

PILGRIM: The remarks we quoted at the top, when you heard those remarks, what was your reaction and the reaction of those attending the event?

FOWLER: Two different reactions. First of all I should say it’s not the first fundraiser I’ve been to. Most of the ones I go to I don’t write up. I don’t think they’re probative of anything. I wasn’t expecting this one to be probative.

Therefore I was quite surprised when he waxed at length and eloquently on a number of topics. And the first thing that caught my attention was ruminating about possible choices for a running mate should he be a nominee. I was also struck by what he said about Pennsylvanians particular since I had just been in Pennsylvania meeting the same people that he was talking about.

But I would say most people there, I can’t speak for all of them, but most of the people there don’t follow the campaign at enough of a detail or at length to have been struck by his having saying things that he hadn’t said before.

PILGRIM: Mayhill, you wrote in your blog that these comments you felt reinforced negative stereotypes. When you wrote this blog, how much time between the event and when you wrote it. How much did you consider what you were going to write in the blog and did you realize you might generate–

FOWLER: I gave it a great deal of thought. Sunday night I went home and right away I wrote the piece right way about choosing the running mate. That appeared on “Huffington Post” on Monday.

I was not initially going to write about Senator Obama’s remarks about Pennsylvanians. Because, frankly, I didn’t want to bring down the campaign. I gave it more thought and I decided that the remarks bothered me enough that I wanted to write them up.

PILGRIM: Mayhill Fowler, of “Huffington Post,” thank you so much for joining us and describing your recording of these remarks at the event in San Francisco. Thank you, Mayhill.

FOWLER: You’re very welcome.

So this was an exclusive interview with the Woman who got the tape of Obama’s remarks. I can see she struggled with the decision to reveal this or not. That it kept bothering her means she was meant to let others know. But she never meant Obama any harm and if harm was done, Obama did it himself to himself. And since she has the taped conversation, I’d believe her version over anyone else’s. She didn’t do this out of malice, but out of the responsibility she felt to those who read her blog and the Huffington Post. She did as her conscience told her to do.

CNN spent the whole night on this issue if you want to read the transcript the above link will take you right there. The entire night was devoted to just this one thing. It was interesting, but I don’t think Obama deserved so much coverage. Just my opinion. He got lots of free publicity.

Whether or not he owes an apology would depend on the explanation he gives on what he means by what he said. So far he isn’t about to do that. That to me is more troubling than not giving an apology by far. I want to know what he means. Can he explain his remarks or not? Can he be clearer or is he playing it safe in staying away from the subject?

Any comments?