On Wednesday, I testified before the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission on the Internet and Campaigns. The meeting broadcast is available at www.TVW.org and will air on TVW on Tuesday, August 21st at 8:AM and 4:PM.
I was part of a panel with Bob Stern, President for the Center for Governmental Studies (and previously General Counsel to the California’s Fair Political Practices Commission--equivalent of the PDC), Steve Hoersting, Vice President of the Center for Competitive Politics, former General Counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (and an expert on the FEC), Stefan Sharkansky, founder of SoundPolitics.com, and David Postman, chief political reporter and blogger for the Seattle Times. Some background material for the meeting is posted here.
My role was as a podcast producer and consultant—one who had worked on political campaigns before.
The hearing started with examples of how the internet is being used in campaigns from presidential races, nationally-known voices with strident messages, individual blogs ("everyone's entitiled to my opinion"), and shared video using sites like YouTube.
During opening remarks, I added the idea of community not reflected in the examples. I talked about local blogs as being an online town hall bringing people into the public dialogue and having in-depth conversations. I talked about the roles that political blogs like SoundPolitics and Horse’s Ass are filling in the roles of local newspapers, providing analysis and even doing original reporting.
Bob Stern outlined some of the research California has done, but said that if the PDC decided to act here in tackling campaigns and the internet, they would be "leading the nation" and "ahead of the game".
Stefan Sharkansky talked about how expressing his political views and commentary on his web site is similar to the mainstream media outlets (like Postman's blog) or offline counterparts.
David Postman talked about how the internet is exploding, how quickly things are moving (both with technology and reporting), and the effectiveness of blogs as word of mouth and potentially generating press. He talked about the challenges of determining who is a journalist--something the legislature struggled with in considering "shield law" last session.
Steve Hoersting outlined how the FEC treats uncompensated bloggers—bascially not putting restrictions or reporting requirements on individuals blogging on their own time, even if they are volunteers for a campaign or work in politics elsewhere. Candidates are required to disclose their expenditures when hiring bloggers and consultants, but the individual blogger's freedom of speech is not impacted.
FEC was very reluctant to determine which sites were "the press" or not. They drew the line on paid ads, not content on the particular site. The advertiser, not the web site operator has the responsibility of complying with campaign law.
As we talked about how bloggers generate their revenue, the panel talked through various scenarios about internet advertising and how campaign or candidate spending would show up on existing PDC reports.
Some questioning was around independent expenditures and especially paid bloggers. Commissioner Jane Nolan asked about the process of creating a video podcast and how to get airtime.
Some of the discussion here talked about how news media would be impacted.
The discussion also talked about well-known issues of appearance of corruption including Armstrong Williams, Jerome Armstrong, and the consultant behind the ad mocking Hillary Clinton using Apple’s 1984 Superbowl ad. One note that the panel mentioned that wasn’t emphasized enough—these instances were a handful of tens of millions of active blogs. And that the possibility of generating interesting and entertaining video is in the hands of more and more people.
Overall, closing themes from all of the panel members was that...
The PDC should tread carefully. Many scenarios involved not only the organized campaign (or opposition) but also an individual supporter or volunteer that could be caught by requirements. The 2003 report from Bipartisan California Commission on Internet Political Practices still applies today and illustrated several problems with regulators not understanding the nature of the internet, or unintended consequences with taking action.
PDC assistant director Doug Ellis summarized the following timeline if the PDC wanted to take action for new regulation or reporting requirements for the 2008 elections.
- 9/27 meeting: Commissioners would need to give general guidelines and direction to staff for any proposal
- 10/24 meeting: Commissioners would need to consider any draft language
- 12/19 meeting: Any draft language would need to go the code revisor’s office.
- January 2008: Formal approval and action.
Notes: I updated this entry with some additional notes once I was able to review the hearing broadcast, plus with some helpful feedback from Bob Stern.
- Steve Hoersting posts "The Internet Isn't the Problem" in his summary of the meeting here.
- Press coverage from the Olympian is here.
- The Seattle Times finally published an article on regarding this hearing, appearing on the paper on September 3rd.
When I'm asked to evaluate internet media sites, I look at the 4Qs: 
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