Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
To both you and Ty.
The only difference I see is that tax payor money was used by the administration, which clealy makes it a much worse offense on the part of the administration, but does not really effect the fault of the "journalist." The fact that Kos disclosed this is a step in the right direction, but frankly, for that disclosure to be effective it should be reiterated in any piece he writes about Dean.
The larger point is that this seems to be more than an isolated event. I don't believe for a second that Kos, Williams, and the other blogger paid by Dean are alone in this.
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You're only willing to fault the administration for spending money, but you're being obtuse about the differences between how money is spent. Do you not see a difference between, e.g., the Pentagon spending $10,000 on avionics equpment for a helicopter, and the Pentagon spending $10,000 to pay FOX not to run unfavorable stories? Of course you can. Spending government money on PR firms is one thing; spending it to buy favorable coverage from a journalist is quite another. Much of what PR firms do is entirely legitimate, but the latter smacks of fraud -- it's deceiving people.
And Kos is not a journalist. Never claimed to be. The harder case, IMHO, is the South Dakota bloggers who pretending to be independent but in fact were on the payroll of the Thune campaign. Even there, though, most of us get that there is a difference between someone who holds themself out as a journalist and someone who just starts putting stuff up on a web page.
