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The Peter Principles: Blogs of War
By Peter Roff
October 14, 2004

The evolution of the blogosphere is one of the big stories of the 2004 presidential campaign. For the uninitiated, "blogosphere" is shorthand for the hodgepodge of interconnected weblogs containing postings on just about every conceivable subject.

The blogosphere's impact on the political life of the nation is clear and growing.

After CBS's "60 Minutes II" broadcast a story citing documents allegedly proving President George W. Bush had been given special treatment getting into and getting out of the Texas Air National Guard, it was the blogosphere -- as well as the members of the FreeRepublic.com Internet bulletin board -- that started the deconstruction of those documents, now widely understood to be forgeries.

In a visible demonstration of the adage that nothing in the United States succeeds like success, blogs weigh in on everything from soup to nuts in the presidential campaign, mostly to the good. A disturbing aspect of this, however, is the energy some of them devote to pressuring the traditional media -- newspapers, television networks, wire services and the like -- trying to spin stories while they are developing as well as create them.

The presidential debates are a good example of the trend in action.

Even before the first Bush-Kerry debate had ended, adjective rich messages hit my e-mail inbox letting me know that Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic Party nominee for president, looked presidential, strong, confident and had won the debate. Many of the messages were unsigned; others, a suspiciously large number to my liking, were from people who described themselves as former Bush supporters, fence sitters or undecided independents. None of them made reference to the posting on Democrat-backed Web sites urging activists to do what they could to keep Republicans from stealing the spin.

News organizations should be -- most are -- open to critical comments from news consumers. It is another thing entirely when those comments come in the form of a barrage of e-mail messages attempting to influence the message and intimidate the messenger.

It seemed, in short order, that the function of the first two debates had changed to the point where they merely provided the launching pad for a stream of pro-Kerry political missives (others may have experienced pro-Bush e-mail message; I did not) in a victory for the spin over the substance.

The coordinated campaign -- identified by the dozens and dozens of media e-mail addresses present on the messages "To" line as well as similar if not identical subject lines -- smacks of an effort to shape the coverage extending beyond the spin room and masquerading as unsolicited input from undecided voters. Twenty years in the political arena teaches you a few things, one of which is that undecided voters tend not to write letters once they make up their minds. Activism is generally the province of the hardcore committeds.

Then there is the matter of the challenge.

After the first debate, for example, a number of bloggers suggested John F. Kerry, in violation of the agreed upon rules, pulled some kind of paper from his jacket and laid it on the rostrum. Major media inquiries -- fueled by the bloggers -- produced the news that the object was a pen, not prepared notes as some had suggested: a huge waste of time for all concerned.

Soon after, several blogs began speculating that George W. Bush wore a wire during the debates that allowed him to receive real-time coaching from off-stage while he went head-to-head with Kerry.

The sites, still very active, allude to photos and videotape that show, proponents of the idea say, some kind of "rounded hump between his shoulder blades." Well, you see what you want to see but the Bush campaign dismisses the idea as "preposterous."

"It's ridiculous," Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel has said repeatedly. "Some people have been spending far too much time on left-wing conspiracy Web sites. Did you hear the one about the third debate being moderated by Elvis?" And yet the mere presence of the discussion on the Internet has been enough to drive the story -- helped along by some oblique references to it on television by Kerry surrogates -- into the mainstream media.

And the messages, subject line "Bush's bulge," continue to arrive.

In one sense, the blogs are a welcome addition to the information age. Decentralized, they allow for the effective use of specialized information in a way that Friedrich Hayek would no doubt approve of. The blogs' power to check the major media, as demonstrated in the CBS case, is further sign that the old order of things is passing away.

On the other hand, their deliberate use -- or misuse -- as collectives applying pressure through pass-through forwarded messages as stories develop -- sometimes even with threats to defame or expose those who resist -- is a threat to the intellectual integrity of the process. There is no way to stop the messages -- and I fully expect to be on the receiving end of more than a few after this column runs -- but a little sunlight may help put them into the proper context.

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The Peter Principles explores issues in national and local politics, U.S. culture and the media. It is written by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.