{"id":12,"date":"2005-01-21T02:34:01","date_gmt":"2005-01-21T06:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/01\/21\/scandal-and-journalistic-credibility-o"},"modified":"2005-01-21T02:34:01","modified_gmt":"2005-01-21T06:34:01","slug":"scandal-and-journalistic-credibility-on-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/01\/21\/scandal-and-journalistic-credibility-on-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Scandal and journalistic credibility&#8230; ON THE WEB!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a739'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s been a big <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">hullabaloo <\/span>about credibility and blogging this past week, sparked by a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.townhall.com\/columnists\/Armstrongwilliams\/aw20050110.shtml\">Armstrong Williams<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ketchum.com\/DisplayWebPage\/0,1003,28,00.html\">Ketchum<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ed.gov\/index.jhtml\">Department of Education<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edelman.com\/speak_up\/blog\/archives\/2005\/01\/pay_to_play_pr.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">scandal<\/span><\/a>.&nbsp; Right on its heels came a detailed post about <a href=\"http:\/\/zonkette.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/financially-interested-blogging.html\">blogger ethics<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/6127581\">Zephyr Teachout<\/a>, and publicity of this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/01\/20#a737\">WebCred<\/a> conference here at Berkman.&nbsp; Subsequent articles (in the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">WSJ<\/span>,<br \/>\net al.) have tried to compare Williams&#8217;s lack of disclosure with <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Kos<\/span>&#8216;s<br \/>\npartial disclosure, generally to the Blogger&#8217;s discredit.&nbsp;<br \/>\nContributors to the melee include pro- and<br \/>\nanti-<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">disestablismentarian <\/span>bloggers and <a href=\"http:\/\/journalism.nyu.edu\/pubzone\/weblogs\/pressthink\/2005\/01\/15\/berk_pprd.html\">journalists<\/a> (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">look how un\/conflicted the interests of bloggers are!<\/span>&nbsp; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Clearly they can\/cannot be trusted!<\/span>), politicians buttressing and bashing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogforamerica.com\">Howard Dean<\/a>(for-<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracyforamerica.com\/dean_for_chair.php\">DNC-chair<\/a>) (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">look how clean\/corrupt his campaign was!<\/span>), political bloggers for and against <a href=\"http:\/\/dailykos.com\/user\/kos\">Kos<\/a> (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">look what a blog-god\/whore he is!<\/span>),&nbsp; campaign groupies for and against&nbsp; (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">look how open and moral \/ calculating and vituperative she is!<\/span>), and even more restrictive <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">subsubgroups<\/span>, such as bloggers <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/palfrey\/2005\/01\/18\">for<\/a> and against the <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/home\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Berkman Center<\/span><\/a> (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">look at what actively idealistic people \/ kitten-eating cyborgs they are!<\/span>).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethan\">Someone<\/a> I know has a great picture of the lot of them <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eating kittens<\/span>, but is holding back in the hopes of blackmailing a free parking spot out of John Palfrey.&nbsp; And for the record, I think<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> every last one<\/span> of the individuals and institutions mentioned in the previous paragraph is simultaneously decent and human. Yes, even the DoE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a big hullabaloo about credibility and blogging this past week, sparked by a recent Armstrong Williams\/Ketchum\/Department of Education scandal.&nbsp; Right on its heels came a detailed post about blogger ethics by Zephyr Teachout, and publicity of this week&#8217;s WebCred conference here at Berkman.&nbsp; Subsequent articles (in the WSJ, et al.) have tried to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indescribable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}