Will the Liberal Malcontents wind up in jail?
Apparently, the FEC is considering whether it should regulate blogs, as they might represent a vehicle for "circumventing campaign finance laws," and because "some Web sites actually provide unregulated benefits to specific political campaigns." Hmmm. It seems unlikely that the FEC will really make much of a stance here, but if I am in favor of public campaign financing as a means to get campaign spending into some semblance of sanity, (not like it will ever happen), should I also agree that blogs should be regulated? Is it true that they can effectively become a means to circumvent campaign finance laws? Very ironically, the link is to an article on FOX's website, which concludes with the following paragraph: "TV networks can broadcast and newspapers can publish hard-charging political editorials without violating campaign finance laws under a journalist exemption. Bloggers want to be included in the exemption, leaving the FEC to decide whether bloggers are journalists."
3 Comments:
Thanks for blogging this, I was wondering if I should pay attention to this story. If anything is free speech it's blogging, so in general I'm against regulation. However if some super-monied group sets up a blog with a specific political purpose...hmmm. It all depends on the details.
Great comments, Mark. I think the matrixed use of technologies is making it a lot harder for people to stiffle opinions. From an issues management standpoint it is wonderful, because it forces you to articulate a message in several different places, for different audiences, rather than simply broadcasting a response. I heard someone say on the radio yesterday that the same strategies need to be used in rebuffing terrorist recruiting efforts. We need well articulated responses and proactive campaigns in the same media as the recruiters. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the recap of the shut downs.
Thanks Mark Cohen. Good points.
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