Blogflops
During the final months of the campaign, while conducting a content analysis of four leading political blogs, I noticed scandals and stories that tickled bloggers into a tizzy. Receiving most of my news from blogs I was surprised how often friends and colleagues had not heard about bloggers' urgent stories. What could such "blogflops" reveal about this debutante medium of the political communications system?
1. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger came under investigation
for removing copies of documents from the National Archives. During the period
of observation, InstaPundit posted on the story 34 times, but Daily
Dish only 7, Talking Points Memo only 12 and Daily
Kos never. MSM covered the story
when it broke, but, despite Reynolds posting until late November, blogosphere
buzz did not give the story "legs."
2. InstaPundit on Sept. 7 picked up a Drudge
Report item claiming the gun
democratic candidate John Kerry posed with in a photo op was a model he had
voted to ban. Six updates, 923 words, links to other blogs, quotes from proposed
legislation, photographs, follow-up post on Sep. 20th. The London
Daily Telegraph made a minor reference to it in an article detailing sleaze in U.S. campaigns.
3. InstaPundit, Drudge, and other conservative blogs on Oct. 3, claim
debate video showed Kerry with a cheat sheet. Seven updates within the same
day until rumor disproved. Only major paper to mention it was the Cleveland
Plain Dealer.
4. Beginning Oct. 24, Talking Points Memo blogs almost exclusively
on 350 tons of Iraqi explosives looted during the early days of the US occupation.
Over 19,000 words in 50 posts over 6 days made story a case study in
the administration's deception and the media's acquiescent manipulation.
Daily Kos 10 posts, Daily Dish 14, InstaPundit 17. Right-wing blogs,
spurred by William Safire, focus on how CBS News planned to hold the
story until 36 hours before polls opened, presumably to influence the
election against Bush. Both the right and left blogs use the story as
contradictory illustrations of media bias. MSM coverage does occur, but
without bloggers‘ framing
of the story as an example of administration deception and / or media
bias.
5. Talking Points Memo smelled another scandal involving the Italian
businessman who supplied the forged documents behind President Bush's
infamous "16
words" about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Africa. Ten posts
suggested there was more to the story. No major newspaper in the U.S.
addressed the implications of the Italian during the campaign's final
months.
6. On August 23, Daily Kos ran a 640-word, triple-updated post questioning
Bush‘s Texas Air National Guard medals, following a 122-post thread in
the Democratic Underground discussion forums and also linking to a related
275-post DU thread. Using pictures of Bush, his discharge papers, medals sported
by Bush and Kerry, and Daily Kos primary blogger Markos Moulitsas' own discharge
papers, Daily Kos concluded that there was a disparity between Bush‘s
medals and discharge papers, supporting theories that he did not serve completely. “WE
MUST START THE ECHO CHAMBER. START POUNDING THE DRUMS” read the first
of 148 reader comments. Talking Points Memo and Daily
Dish didn't mention it.
InstaPundit complained that the issue was receiving more investigation from
liberal blogs than Kerry‘s Christmas-in-Cambodia claims. MSM shrugged.
7. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish did not indulge in many tempests. He came closest blogging on Mary Cheney, daughter of the Vice President, whose lesbianism was pointed out by Kerry and running mate John Edwards as not-so-subtle stabs at the Republican anti-gay-marriage platform. Sullivan, who is gay, pounded on the issue for 30 posts over 7 days, dissecting Republican hypocrisy and opportunistic exploitation of constituent homophobia. Talking Points Memo addressed it in three posts, Daily Kos in two, and InstaPundit in one. MSM covered the issue significantly, but primarily through the Republican frame of Kerry having intruded into the Cheneys‘ personal matters -- not the hypocrisy of Republican politics.