60 Minutes Courting Bloggers

Yes­ter­day I got a call from a pub­li­cist for CBS News’s _60 Minutes_. They’re run­ning a story tonight on “Desert­ers,” U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel who have fled to Canada rather than serve in Iraq. She was request­ing that I talk up the pro­gram on Non​vi​o​lence​.org (I have here: “CBS News Cov­ers New Con­sci­en­tious Objectors”:nonviolence.org/tag/CBS%20News%20Covers. In nine years of pub­lish­ing the peace site, I can’t remem­ber ever get­ting a call from a pub­li­cist before. I’ve talked to reporters from major news net­works and papers, and I’ve talked a book­ing agent or two to arrang­ing appear­ances on radio shows, but never a publicist.

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_60 Minutes_ has had a rough sea­son with blog­gers. Back in Sep­tem­ber, they ran a spe­cial report in which they showed doc­u­ments that raised ques­tions about Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s National Guard ser­vice. The story was reported by CBS anchor Dan Rather him­self. A whole slew of blog­gers like “Ratherbiased.com”:http://www.ratherbiased.com/ didn’t believe the doc­u­ments and began a hermeneu­ti­cal tear-down, delv­ing into the eso­ter­ica of font design and the avail­abil­ity of spe­cific IBM Selec­tric II type­writer mod­els on U.S. mil­i­tary bases in the early 1970s. The crit­ics were relent­less but they were also appar­ently onto some­thing. The evi­dence mounted that the CBS doc­u­ments were forg­eries and in the face of ques­tions CBS stonewalled. When the finally issued their retrac­tion and apol­ogy it was too late: the career of Dan Rather had taken a hit from “Memogate”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2107006/. Two weeks ago Rather announced he was tak­ing early retire­ment from his anchor job at CBS.
CBS News has learned that polit­i­cal blog­gers aren’t just a cute story to be inserted as filler when the anchor needs a pee break. Back in 1998, Matt Drudge proved that “rouge” inter­net sites could make the news when he broke the Mon­ica Lewin­sky story (or rather ele­vated it from some­thing all the insider reporters knew to some­thing they all had to report on). And in 2004 his prot�g�s are prov­ing that infor­mal net­works of “nobody” blog­gers can suc­cess­fully take on pil­lars of the estab­lish­ment. (Update: On the day I got my call, a CBS web­site story announced that “blogs are increas­ingly gain­ing influence”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/08/politics/main659955.shtml and explored the pos­si­bil­ity of gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of polit­i­cal blogs.)
So now CBS News pub­li­cists are court­ing blog­gers. That’s great: hey, if y’all want to buy me that new Treo Smart­phone or a gift cer­tifi­cate to “Gohn Bros.”:/martink/archives/000414.php I’ll say Dan Rather is hot­ter than an armadillo sun­ning him­self between the yel­low lines on the inter­state (okay, I’m not good imi­tat­ing that “Texas hoohaw of his”:http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blratherisms.htm). Read­ers shouldn’t feel too sorry for Rather, as his retire­ment as anchor­man will be as a full-time cor­re­spon­dent on 60 Min­utes. For those inter­ested in what pub­lic­ity can buy, check Technorati’s list of blogs that have linked to the 60 Min­utes piece (15 as of 5:00pm, three hours to show­time).
I’ve cov­ered the “Cana­dian resister story on Nonviolence.org”:/articles/000331.php a few times, mostly to com­ment on it’s media appeal. A cer­tain gen­er­a­tion love any­thing that reminds them of the glory years of 1968. The excite­ment over the “Desert­ers” is like that around the unlikely pos­si­bil­ity of a new draft: both are fed as much by nos­tal­gia as they are news­wor­thi­ness. Both are also ways for older activists to claim the ban­ner of youth activism while actu­ally ignor­ing youth activists, some­thing I’ve explored in “Peace and Twenty-Somethings”:/martink/archives/000100.php
h4. Update 7:00pm
bq.. There’s noth­ing that gets the blo­gos­phere more excited than blog­ging about blog­ging. Like any good blog­ger worth their salt, rather​biased​.com checked Tech­no­rati and their refer logs and found this post. It’s now a head­line, “CBS Recruit­ing Anti-War Blog­gers to ‘Talk Up’ Army Deserter Story?”:http://ratherbiased.com/news/content/view/518/2/. I pur­pose­fully used “courted” rather than “recruited” since the pub­li­cist didn’t give me any­thing but a link (no Treo awaited me when I got home tonight, alas). The com­men­tary to the rather​biased​.com arti­cle is pretty good, though. Although I dis­agree with the pol­i­tics I do believe the blogs can’t be con­trolled and think the publicist’s phone call was more amus­ing than effective–sure I linked, but it’s a story I’ve been cov­er­ing any­way.
One of the prob­lems with polit­i­cal blogs is that we spend a lot of our time com­ment­ing on each arti­cle that appears in the main­stream news media. We’re often very reac­tive. Yes, we may be chal­leng­ing Dan Rather and the geri­atric news set but we’re spend­ing a lot of time watch­ing them and they’re still largely dic­tat­ing what we cover. It’s over a year since I “wor­ried I was using Tech­no­rati too much for my inspiration”:/articles/000221.php. Any­way, it’s good to see the rather​biased​.com link. And it’s hilar­i­ous to see a com­menter accuse me of tak­ing “march­ing orders from on-their-way-out geri­atrics” (someone’s not read my blog much, ahem).
h4. Update 7:14pm
bq.. Oh now “lit­tle green footballs”:http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13877_CBS_Recruiting_Anti-War_Bloggers has picked up “ratherbiased’s post”:http://ratherbiased.com/news/content/view/518/2/ about “my per­sonal web­site post”:/martink/archives/000496.php (this page) about my “Non​vi​o​lence​.org post”:/articles/000497.php which of course was about the “CBS News website”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/06/60II/main659336.shtml. Read­ers with PhDs in post­mod­ern her­menuet­ics will no doubt note that even the CBS News link is a post about their TV show. Mar­shall McLuhan is smil­ing in his grave.
I think it’s time for Salon to post to all this in some expose about how the whole blo­gos­phere is just posts on posts. If they posted an arti­cle like that, I’d post to it. Cer­tainly.
h4. Update 7:32pm
bq.. Wait a minute. An hour ago it was just lil’ ol’ Non​vi​o​lence​.org and a hand­ful of obscure web­sites link­ing to the CBS News arti­cle. Now it’s rather​biased​.com and lgf. Hey, that pub­li­cist is going to get a big bonus now. My Quaker Ranter post is get­ting CBS a lot more hits than the Non​vi​o​lence​.org one. Note to CBS: “Here’s my Pay­Pal link”:https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=nvweb%40nonviolence.org&item_name=Nonviolence.Org%2BDonation&no_note=1&currency_code=USD&image_url=https://secure.serve.com/nvweb/graphics/paypallogo.gif.
“Instapundit”:http://instapundit.com/archives/019731.php and “The Volokh Conspiracy”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_07.shtml#1102546784 have jumped on the blo­gos­phere band­wagon, but they’re both pretty wussy in not link­ing directly to my arti­cle. The points that Volokh make are the same ones I make. My fel­low left-wing con­spir­acist “NoCapital”:http://nocapital.blogspot.com/2004_12_05_nocapital_archive.html has also linked. “Wonkette’s”:http://www.wonkette.com/politics/personalities/for-sale-blogger-cheap-027350.php jumped on the band­wagon; she linked directly to this site (kudos) but inten­tion­ally mis­un­der­stood what site we were talk­ing about (Non​vi​o​lence​.org) just to get a cheap joke in.
Why do so many of these blog­gers remind me of the cool kids in junior high school. It’s all there: the snarky atti­tude, the insider lingo and jokes, an obses­sion with self and one’s place in the peck­ing over any­thing real. Here’s Wonkette’s “descrip­tion of herself”:http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/ReadMe/article.php?id=355: “I see my job as mak­ing the funny hap­pen… Peo­ple do things worth mock­ing whether they are con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral so I mock them all. No one is above my scorn.” Exactly. The words of a self-obsessed junior high princess. Are these even really polit­i­cal blogs? I mean, really?
h4. Ran­dom Later Updates
bq. Who’s kid­ding who with all this feigned out­rage? For those miss­ing the irony gene: the Non​vi​o​lence​.org Pay­Pal account cur­rently has a bal­ance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last donation–$5.00 back on Novem­ber 20th. My cor­ner of the left wing con­spir­acy is funded by the vast per­sonal wealth I accu­mu­late as a clerk in a reli­gious book­store. Wonkette’s pages adver­tise “spon­sor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties,” she’s a recent cover girl on _New York Times Magazine_ and her hus­band is an edi­tor at _New York_ mag­a­zine. Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for San­dra Day O’Connor), teaches law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the _Times_. Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds teaches law at the Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee, has served on White House advi­sory pan­els, and is a paid cor­re­spon­dent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the oth­ers, calls a two minute phone call “recruit­ing”?
These guys aren’t really blog­ging in their PJ’s, folks. They are paid pro­fes­sional polit­i­cal oper­a­tives who work, social­ize and lit­er­ally sleep with those in power in the MSM and polit­i­cal par­ties. I’m begin­ning to think the real inter­net inter­est comes from the fact that this top tier of blog­gers is totally in bed (lit­er­ally) with the MSM. Their income comes from their con­nec­tions with media and polit­i­cal power. Their carefully-crafted fas­cade of snark­ish inde­pen­dence would crum­ble if their phone logs were made pub­lic. By men­tion­ing the exis­tance of blog-targeting pub­li­cists, I’ve threat­ened to blow their cover.
By men­tion­ing the exis­tance of blog pub­li­cists, I’ve threat­ened to blow their cover. Pay no atten­tion to the men behind the cur­tains: my social gaffe was in telling the story of how the MSM courts bloggers.