May 24, 2005
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Blogged
by Alex Hinton
“I got blogged!”
As blogging explodes, such idioms are fast entering everyday speech, a marker of our times just as “you’ve got mail!” marked the late 1990s.
There are more than 10 million blogs active on the Web, with thousands more appearing each day. As they proliferate, more of us are getting blogged. “Blogged” is a passive term, suggesting a lack of agency in the moment, an act revealed in the past tense.
For some, being blogged can be exciting and fun, a momentary step into the public light and warmth of an e-community. For others, it calls to mind another phrase that begins “I got….”
I got blogged recently after writing an op-ed that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor about the 30th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge revolution.
The op-ed considered the lessons we might take away from the Cambodian genocide as we now live in a world of war and terrorism, and warned about the dangers of fanaticism, political paranoia, torture, stereotyping, euphemistic language, displacing responsibility and desensitization. By learning from the past, I argued, we could become “more self-aware, humble, tolerant and … willing to act in the face of evil.”
Given the current political climate, it’s not surprising that the essay elicited strong messages of both support and disagreement, but I was surprised by the abrasive tone of a few of them. Then a likely source suggested itself.
One of the messages indicated the piece had been picked up by Power Line, perhaps the most popular conservative blog, averaging more than 69,000 visits a day. Power Line, run by three lawyers, has the distinction of being named “Blog of the Year” by Time, largely because of its role in raising doubts about the authenticity of the documents involved in the “Rathergate” scandal.
The post about my op-ed, written by Paul Mirengoff (a.k.a. “Deacon“), one of the Power Line trio, was entitled “A Very Sick Professor.” According to Mirengoff, my op-ed argued that the US government’s war on terrorism was “causing us to become like the Khmer Rouge.” It described my purported stance as “obscene” and “off-the-chart lunacy,” while noting that I was “far from the only leftist to have compared Bush to Hitler.” It concluded: “The hatred of folks like Hinton for the US knows no discernible bounds.”
The posting had the amusingly over-the-top tone of a North Korean propaganda tract. However, it’s disturbing that such a well-regarded blog would publish a post that not only distorted what I’d written, but did so in a hateful and dehumanizing manner.
This was precisely the sort of thing my op-ed warned against. Mirengoff’s use of an illness metaphor (“A very sick professor”) was particularly unsettling; this sort of language pervades the ideological rhetoric of hate groups and has been taken to its extreme by those who have incited genocide.
Not only is such language dehumanizing, it legitimatizes attacks on another person or group since, by implication, illnesses are threats to the health of the body politic. It was precisely this sort of authorization that was likely behind the vitriol of a few of the messages about my op-ed, which echoed the tone and content of Mirengoff’s blog.
It was particularly disheartening to find such things written by a lawyer who, one would hope, would adhere to a higher set of ethical principles and hesitate before maligning another person (nowhere, for example, did I compare President Bush to Hitler nor indicate that I hated the United States). Mirengoff completely missed the point off my op-ed.
More broadly, the Power Line post raises several important ethical questions about blogging. First, should there be a bloggers’ code of ethics? Blogs are particularly fascinating because they blur the lines between the public and the private, occupying an intermediary position not subject to ordinary standards that govern public speech and writing.
For political bloggers such as the Power Line trio, who presumably aspire to a sort of journalistic credibility and would like to avoid charges of hypocrisy, a code of ethics is crucial as they criticize “mainstream media” for their shortcomings. Perhaps the blogs deeply committed to ethical blogging could post or provide a link to the code of ethics to which they subscribe. One site, Cyberjournalist.net, has already proposed such a code, based loosely on a journalistic code of ethics. Alternatively, political bloggers might form a professional association and develop their own set of ethical guidelines and an ethics awareness program.
Bloggers committed to ethical blogging and voluntary self-regulation could then display a related insignia on their site — just as businesses signal that they are members of the Better Business Bureau. Debates about these issues have begun, but a great deal more discussion is needed. Honesty, accuracy, accountability and humaneness are among the key issues that should be considered.
Second, to what extent, if any, are political blogs like Power Line beholden to special interests? Do they serve as paid consultants to political groups? Do they receive contributions from political campaigns? Who are their advertisers? If such political bloggers criticize mainstream media for bias and influence, they would do well to reveal any financial relationships that might skew their own blogging. Power Line does not provide such information (at least not in a readily visible place) though the blog’s broad political orientation is suggested by the ads it accepts, which display slogans like: “Annoy a Liberal,” “COUNTER THE LIBERAL AGENDA!” “ACLU: Enemy of the State” and “PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER.”
Nick Coleman, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has hammered Power Line for failing to disclose fully its political ties, arguing that, while the blog portrays itself as an independent alternative to mainstream media, Power Line has close ties to the Minnesota Republican party and to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that recently gave an award to Rush Limbaugh.
In a Dec. 29 column, Coleman called the Power Line trio “reliable partisan hacks” who pursue a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers. “They should call themselves Powertool,” he writes. “They don’t speak truth to power. They just speak for power.”
Power Line, which has had a series of sharp exchanges with Coleman and Jim Boyd, the Star Tribune’s deputy editorial page editor, responded vigorously to these suggestions of influence.
Still, concerns that political blogs might serve as fronts for political campaigns has grown enough that the Federal Election Commission has considered requiring more disclosure. But the government would not need to interevene if bloggers self-regulated by adopting a code of ethics that required such disclosure.
And, third, just as we must be sure to defend the free speech of bloggers, so too should we consider how to protect the rights of the blogged.
For, they are, by the nature of blogging in a disadvantageous position. The blogger controls the blog, so the blogged has little recourse to counter a libelous blog. For political blogs, in particular, a commitment to rigorous fact-checking might prevent some of the problems. When Power Line and other blogs make this type of a mistake, they would do well to note it on a prominent corrections page. Such blogs might consider providing some sort of forum, such as a “rebuttals” link, for the blogged to respond to the accusations of the blogger — much in the way that some blogs provide space for commentary and newspapers and magazines accept critical “letters to the editor.”
A commitment to providing such recourse — as well as to fact-checking, making corrections and avoiding libel and dehumanization — could also be incorporated into a bloggers’ code of ethics, providing a degree of protection to the blogged.
Lacking such alternatives, I did three things after I got blogged by Power Line. First, I wrote this essay. Second, I established my own website with links to my original op-ed, Mirengoff’s blog, and this essay. And, third, I sent an e-mail message to Mirengoff voicing my objections to his blog, particularly his use of an illness metaphor.
Not surprisingly, instead of an apology I received a curt reply in which Mirengoff stood by his blog and demanded that I refute his accusations.
In response, I invited him to a debate in a neutral written forum. I’m still waiting for a reply.
Alexander Hinton is an anthropologist and author of “Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.” E-mail him at alexlhinton at hotmail dot com.
— graphic by Chip Van Dyke (comics at chipv dot com)
