If you watched Greater Boston tonight, you know what I’m talking about. Part of today’s “Beat the Press” show was on political blogging, inspired by this Sunday NYT piece on bloggers who have been paid by political campaigns (some of the NYT piece’s facts are wrong, by the way). The basic message of the show’s usual suspects (Rooney, Sciacca, Carroll, Crossley, and guest Paul Niwa): bloggers bad! Bad! Don’t trust them! They might be on the take, and you won’t know ’til it’s too late!
I wouldn’t care that much, except that I foolishly agreed to do an interview to be used as part of the taped piece that runs before the live chitchat. The bits from me ended up making me sound sort of like an apologist for bloggers who hide the fact that they’re on the take, even though what I actually said was that blogger non-disclosure is a bad thing, and I likened it to the Armstrong Williams scandal — it seems to me a no-brainer that opinionistas of whatever stripe should disclose the fact that they’re being paid to opine in a particular way. But that part of my interview wound up on the cutting room floor — one of the regular panelists made the Armstrong Williams point instead (coincidence, I’m sure).
Well, lesson learned, I guess.
