There’s an interesting front-page article in today’s Globe about how Lou DiNatale, perhaps Boston’s most frequently-quoted pollster, is not actually quite as independent as his UMass affiliation might suggest. Turns out he has worked for quite a number of campaigns, sometimes informally as an unpaid advisor, and sometimes as a paid consultant. Yikes.
DiNatale doesn’t seem especially concerned about the obvious conflict issues:
Asked to respond, DiNatale said last week: “It’s messy, but it is not illegal or unethical. I can do anything I want in my private time. I can do all this stuff, OK?”
Well, no. Not OK. Sorry, Lou. As just one obvious example, does anyone really believe that DiNatale’s well-known Democratic leanings could be completely divorced from whatever advice he gave to Christy Mihos? Seems to me that it’s a problem; for more on whether the DiNatale thing matters, check out the mini-debate between sco and Adam Reilly over at Adam’s blog.
This story brings up an issue that was raised at the DCI last weekend. Rumors are swirling that some commenters on this and other sites – and even some bloggers on other sites – are paid consultants for various campaigns. I have no problem with that per se. What I do have a problem with is when financial affiliations of that sort are not disclosed. If we want the internet to remain a largely unregulated forum for speech about political (and other) issues, we owe it to ourselves and to the people who read what we have to say to be up front about conflict of interest issues like these.
Herewith, then, our disclosure, such as it is. None of the three of us that run this blog – Bob, Charley, and myself – is being paid by any campaign or candidate. Nor, with one exception, does any of us have any sort of personal relationship with any candidate running for office in this election cycle. The exception, which has been disclosed many times before, is this: Bob has publicly and repeatedly stated that he has been friends with Andrea Silbert for years and is supporting her candidacy for Lieutenant Governor.
And now, a request: if you write a post, or leave a comment, either on this blog or elsewhere, about a candidate (or someone who is running against a candidate) with whom you have either a financial or a personal relationship, please disclose it. It won’t detract from the point you’re making – arguments on the merits stand or fall on their merits, not on the basis of those kinds of relationships. And it will be a positive step in the direction of establishing the internet as a credible source of information on politics and candidates. That benefits all of us.
This is all part of the interest world bloggers straddle between reporting and campaigning.
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As any small newspaper editor will tell you, it takes time to verify people who submit content for publication — letters to the editor, guest columns and freelance articles. Of course, certain names are easy to flag and identify as campaign operatives. Others, not so easy. Add to that the fact that the vast majority of bloggers and commenters are anonymous and the task becomes even harder.
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I whole-heartedly support efforts to legitimize the news content on this site. For the record, I caucused for Deval but have yet to be paid by any campaign. (I also think Elliot Gould has a naturally “longer” look on his face than DiNitale.)
I don’t consider voting for a candidate in a caucus or at the convention, or donating money to a candidate, to be something that requires disclosure. Absent a financial or personal connection to the candidate, those are things you do because you want the candidate to win. And that’s exactly what we should be talking about: why we want particular candidates to win, and how we can get that to happen.
The term “personal relationship” covers a lot of ground. I know both gubernatorial candidates, all the LG candidates and have known them for varying lengths of time. I have endorsed one in each race. I know people on all of their staffs, many I consider to be friends.
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Thoughts?
you’re right of course – at some point it would be silly to require disclosure of every personal connection every time anyone says anything about a race, especially for folks who are really involved and know a lot of the players.
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How about this as a rule of thumb: if you post something that could reasonably be seen as either pro- or con- a particular candidate in a particular race, and you have a connection to the candidate or race that you would want to know about if you were the reader instead of the writer, disclose it. This whole thing is sort of “honor system” anyway – I don’t have any easy way of policing who knows whom and who is on whose payroll. I just think that the more transparent we can make things, the better off everyone will be.
That’s all. I don’t think we should have any formal rules of disclosure. Post away, folks, for all I care. But be aware that if you have a conflict of interest, it will be exposed if anything you say becomes really significant. That’s the nature of the age we live in: the internet has dramatically increased transparency, or reduced privacy, depending on how one wants to look at the subject. Therefore, it’s best to disclose early, so that if something you say should become widely referenced, no one can accuse you of trying to hide your conflict. Now, of course, having such a conflict may in itself undercut whatever argument one is trying to make. In the case of Mr. DiNatale, for example, it is inexcusable for journalists to continue to offer him as an unbiased source of polling data. His polls should be presented as the work of a paid political campaign consultant, which is what he is.
This came up when I was volunteering for the Jehlen campaign last summer. I wrote comments in support of a candidate that I supported and got called on it. Though I was a heavily involved volunteer, I was not a paid staff member of the campaign.
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Since last summer, I have taken paid campaign consulting work and will continue to do so through this election cycle. I work and volunteer for campaigns and candidates that I believe in, and I would hope that most of the people who get involved online will be active offline as well. My posts and comments here are my own, but I will make every effort to disclose conflicts of interest where appropriate.
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I have written this disclosure on my profile page and my email address is public in case anyone has further questions. I’m going to these steps because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to take advantage of this forum to further a personal agenda… other than getting good progressive democrats elected, of course.
If you read the user posts diaries you can usually get a clear read of either the user’s political agenda or if they are just simply weird folk. For example, if you read my history, one could make a judgement call that I obviously am middle of the road and support Reilly among others. But, I have also given money to some of the other candidates, so why should I disclose anything?. There is really no reason to disclose unless the readers are so paranoid that they can’t make their own decisions.
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Political blogs are for the so-called political elite, so let the bloggers judge for themselves. We are not enticing children to strange places or selling Ponzi schemes. This is strictly pure political discourse that 95% of the voters will never read anyway. There is indeed more bullshit from paid sources in the regular newspapers that never gets disclosed.
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If Adolph Hitler was posting here under a pseudonym and didn’t disclose I could care less . I am intelligent enough to make my own judgement call on the substance of his writing’s. Mein Kampf is not particularly my preference of reading material but thanks Adolph for allowing me to read your garbage. Karl Rove could be getting paid $1,000,000 for posting here. Who cares. I would take all their ideas , evaluate the argument and make a judgement call. I don’t need you to filter the source, because it is truly the idea that influences me more anything else. That is the beauty of blogs.
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Once you start going down the road of censorship of any kind you wll destroy the internet. In my view, if you really believe you can make the internet a credible source by creating the types of disclosure rules suggested you are fooling your self. We certainly don’t need any more cops in the world for people who don’t have enough common sense to make their own decisions. Lets not start now. Next thing we will see are traffic tickets for not wearing seatbelts.