Two really scary words: politics and the Internet
Political blogs are changing the rules of engagement. As they are being rewritten, are we better or worse off? Or are things just different now?
By ADAM C. SMITH
Published December 10, 2006
"You listen to eBay and e-mail and all that junk, and you all kept writing about it, and that fans it and makes it grow and grow, and it becomes a cancer." - Bobby Bowden, talking to reporters recently.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - The Florida State football coach is hardly alone in his angst about the new Internet-driven media world.
Of course, I can't say I listen much to eBay, but seven days a week I click on the St. Petersburg Times' popular Buzz political blog blogs.tampabay.com/buzz wondering whether the comments posted by political junkies across Florida will offer insight, partisan banalities or anonymous, sleazy attacks to be deleted.
We're moving fast into a sometimes scary new world for politics and media, and there's no turning back. Lately I've been reminded constantly of how dramatically the Internet is changing the landscape:
- Among a group of Southern political and state government reporters at a University of North Carolina conference last week, almost all journalists had recently started a political blog, were warily preparing to start one or were wringing their hands over their struggling companies' new preoccupations with the online product versus the daily paper.
- Over lunch the other day a top Republican consultant anxiously wondered whether our Buzz blog allowing bare-knuckles insider comments meant it's become open season for attacking normally behind-the-scenes political operatives.
- Hours later, at the Republican Governors Association conference outside Miami, national Republican strategists lamented how effectively the left-leaning blogosphere spread damaging information about Republicans. One example? YouTube turning "macaca" into a household word and helping unseat Virginia Sen. George Allen.
"We have to do the same thing or we have to figure out a way to combat that in an effective way going into the next cycle," said Phil Musser, the RGA's outgoing executive director.
The time when the mainstream press controlled the flow of information is long gone. These days, negative stories float for weeks or months on the blogosphere and eventually make it into the traditional media.
We saw it this year with the Mark Foley scandal and with allegations that Charlie Crist fathered a child. Dubious rumors are routinely posted on the Buzz blog, among others. An exasperated Jeb Bush at one point this fall faced reporters asking him to respond to an obscure Web site "reporting" that the governor had been aware of Foley's inappropriate behavior.
"If the next governor ... is going to have to respond to every blog and every tired little anonymous person who has some bitter part in their soul who wants to express it on the Internet, it's not going to work," Bush said.
But this is the emerging world with which we're grappling every day, and which voters eventually will too.
The Times started the Buzz blog 1 1/2 years ago as a way to provide political news nuggets that often don't get past the space constraints of the newspaper. It quickly took off, and now is regularly read by everyone from the governor to local political activists. All the big daily newspapers in Florida have since followed suit.
At its best, the anonymous commenting we allow on the blog produces a witty, informed and free-wheeling conversation about Florida politics. At its worst, it's a vehicle for personal attacks and rumormongering that needs constant policing.
At last week's Southern journalist roundtable at UNC's School of Journalism and Program on Public Life, two veteran campaign consultant embraced the changing world of communication.
Republican Carter Wrenn, Jesse Helms' longtime top campaign adviser, recalled how 30 years ago, TV and direct mail changed the landscape by allowing candidates to bypass the mainstream media. The Internet is increasingly doing the same thing - and ultimately will be a virtually free way to reach voters directly.
"In the (political) insiders' world, the Internet in effect is stripping away the secrecy and exposing everything," noted Wrenn. "We're moving into a purely democratic form of information."
Democratic consultant Gary Pearce, Wrenn's longtime adversary in statewide campaigns in North Carolina, brushed off the talk about the Internet making politics nastier and meaner.
"Brutalizing politicians is as American as apple pie," said Pearce, only half joking. "(The negative attacks) may be scaring off some good people, but I suspect it's also scaring off some even worse sleazebags than what we've got."
Wrenn and Pearce (naturally, they have their own blog, talkingaboutpolitics.com) dismiss talk of the Internet helping hasten the extinction of traditional news outlets. The information explosion only makes context and perspective all the more important.
"The role of newspapers may not be determining what information gets out there, because it's all getting out there," Wrenn told the newspaper reporters talking about shrinking profits and news staffs. "Your role may be explaining what the value of different pieces of information is."
Florida politicos tell Buzz contributors constantly how much they like or, less often, how much they hate, our blog. A few months ago, the manager of a statewide campaign congratulated me on the success of the Buzz.
"You're changing the way politics works in Florida," he said.
That's a stretch. But it's still one of the scariest things I heard this year.
Adam C. Smith can be reached at (727) 893-8241 or asmith@sptimes.com.