Nice post, EK.

Ben Smith makes a key point. With the Democratic establishment taking power, things are more complicated. To the degree that blogging, as a form of journalism, is supposed to be a check on government, it seems clear that Matt is limited in his effectiveness being under CAP. This episode clearly will have an impact on Matt's selection of topics down the road. It is the job that pays his bills and the boss isn't happy. That's a problem for his editorial independence.

This was fun, but I am so ready for it to be over ...

... that said, there seem to be two forces here.
(1) Palmieri's response was really heavy handed.
(2) The fact that "there are real consequences if Third Way is seen to be disfavored by CAP", to the point that either the CEO of CAP would think to write a disclaimer and say nice things about Third Way or that Third Way would call and grouse and that the CEO of CAP would agree and think the appropriate course of action is to write a disclaimer and say nice things about Third Way, just demonstrates that Atrios is right and we are ruled by people living out their middle school social groups and fears.

(1) is sort of wev and we can now all just move on, but (2) really feels like the fundamental broken nature of political DC.

Also you really need a new capta check program; it's frequently impossible to distinguish "i" from "j" or even "r" from "n, as well as some others.

There's also the fact that apparently Matt either feels, or has been told, that he's not allowed to say a single word about it beyond the one Palmieri post. That just feels disturbing, although I like to keep in mind that neither I, nor the literally hundreds of commenters mocking him for not responding further, know exactly what happened behind the scense. (But at least I know I don't know -- the number of commenters there who have decided that he's just being a jerk about it is astounding.)

...he said, 10 seconds before seing Matt's latest post addressing the issue.

This is kind of avoiding the issue. Matt's blog has been going for awhile, and he's had strong opinions about many things that would probably upset the higher-ups. But, they decided that his comments about Third Way necessitated a response from the acting CEO. Third Way, like you said, is incrementalist bullshit and in no way "progressive". CAP lost me as a long-time reader of their sites and blogs.

CAP is not a blog publisher.

Really? Who exactly is publishing Matt's blog, then??

The fact that Palmieri's message was public is, I think, a good sign.

It probably was a good thing, but not a good sign. After all the reaction going on over there, it's hard to see how the next time something like this doesn't get handled in an office with closed doors. Fans of transparency may be glad Ms. Palmieri did something rather stupid and unseemly in public, but it looked accidental to me, and likely won't happen again. In public.

Ezra, I suspect Palmieri went public not for the sake of transparency, but to save face for Third Way and publicly refute Matt's criticism of Third Way.

Follow the money...Once there's money involved, there's influence and pressure on any journalist, no matter who they write for. I can't see any way to avoid this, short of not getting paid for writing. Newspapers and news magazines try to set up a "firewall" between the editorial side and the money side, but it is an imperfect wall.

One thing I don't like about this is Palmieri's pretending that this is some sort of substantive disagreement between CAP and Yglesias over Third Way.

In fact, she didn't mention any such disagreement in her post on Yglesias' blog. Rather, she said that CAP and Third Way worked together on an initiative.

In other words, she's not saying "we think Yglesias is wrong, and therefore want to make clear he doesn't speak for us" but rather "Yglesias may well be right, but we have to pretend that Third Way is a great organization because we are in a partnership with them".

Thus, the whole thing has the stench of an attempt to impose an official orthodoxy, specifically, I assume the Third Way people really hate the fact that liberals criticize them as a bunch of right-wing tools and capitulationists who are unwilling to support a real move to the left. So instead of trying to address that criticism by proposing some good left-wing proposals, they are trying to silence it by throwing their weight around and making their partners play ball.

The fact is, at bottom, there is and has been a struggle for a long time between those elements of the Democratic coalition who want the party to stand foresquare for liberalism and those who want the party to be a second conservative party in order to attract Southern white voters and big corporate donors. This was a shot fired in that larger war. And liberals should recognize it as such and fire back.

In terms of the actual post and why it caused such controversy ... Matt posted it, according to his account today, but instead of putting a lead in sentence and then block quoting Ms. Palmieri's message, he just posted Ms. Palmieri's message (which read like someone who's been exposed to one too many post-event spin rooms) verbatim ...

... leaving it entirely ambiguous who had posted it, whether it was in front of or behind Matt's back ... and in the grey of that ambiguity the netroots only takes a short while to paint a whole nefarious scenario.

Clumsily written on the part of Ms. Palmieri (now we know why Edward's communication shop was always behind the curve) ... clumsily posted on the part of MY (though since he hosts very few posts by anyone else, that's probably for lack of practice).

to save face for Third Way

That certainly worked out well.

(Any chance of getting the "Remember personal info" box to actually work?)

Unfortunately CAP and MY handled this terribly. Why MY didn't make clear at the time or clear in his later posts that he had posted Jennifer P's words at her request instead of her landing the offending post in his blog herself is, well, unclear. MY came off afterwards as young, a bit frightened and defensive. He IS young of course. But he's always come off as much more savvy about how things work than this. I imagine he's opined on many PR disasters. How could he not handle this better? Why didn't he provide an intro to Jennifer's original post? Perhaps he didn't like the post and acted out. Who knows? We all make mistakes of course. MY has the burden of having mistakes like these be public. I like MY a lot. I like his opinions. I hope he's learned from this. It would be nice to hear from him at some point on that. A great thing about blogs is that good bloggers as a matter of course bare all. My sense of MY's personality is that he would be comfortable doing this. Maybe being published by CAP limits him in this instance.

What surprises me is the lack of critical commentary from Matthew Yglesias's immediate blogging peers. There has been, for example, no skull-fucking - deserved as it is. I suspect the word is out to go easy on Palmieri.

My problem with all this is that bloggers like Ezra, and Matt and Steve Benen, and Kevin Drum and Stoller, etc might as well be having a daily meeting deciding what the conventional wisdom with be on an issue before writing about it. I find myself reading these blogs less because they are so predictable.
Hint: The Nation has lasted all these years because they criticize everyone.

or at least less heavy-handed (letting Matt publish Palmieri's response, say)

Their (possibly CYA) claim now is that this is in fact how it went down, but that they did it so ineptly that you couldn't tell that it wasn't just Palmieri bigfooting Matt. I can't tell if I believe that or not.

"This was fun, but I am so ready for it to be over ..."

It'll be over when Matt quits or when Podesta fires him.

Yglesias regularly deviates from core Democratic principles in a way that someone like Ezra, for example, does not.

I didn't really understand why CAP hired him in the first place. It's always seemed an awful fit to me.

Yglesias should blog. People should read him, and I'm sure they will no matter what domain he blogs from. But CAP ought to have people under their masthead who have a desire and willingness to serve the larger cause of the Democratic Party, and that sure as hell doesn't describe Matt.

Petey:

So the CAP should just hew to the Party Line?

That seems to me both potentially illegal (it's complicated, but tax and campaign finance laws require these organizations not to coordinate with political parties) and quite wrongheaded (we don't need a think tank to say whatever the DNC wants it to (DNC press releases can do that), we need it to generate good ideas whether or not the Party likes them).

That seems to me both potentially illegal

Come on! You can't possibly believe this. You can't possibly believe that it would be illegal for a think tank or whatever the hell CAP is to spout the party line.

"So the CAP should just hew to the Party Line?"

Of course.

CAP is the Party at the moment.

-----

"Come on! You can't possibly believe this. You can't possibly believe that it would be illegal for a think tank or whatever the hell CAP is to spout the party line."

Dilan's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I can believe he believes this.

For some reason, I'm reminded of this from Citizen Kane:

Leland: [about Kane's "Declaration of Principles"] I'd like to keep that particular piece of paper myself. I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important. A document... Bernstein: Sure! Leland: ...like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.

Now I'm wondering whether Matt didn't purposely make it look like Palmieri bigfooted him in order to cleverly draw a shftstorm of negative attention down on Palmieri and Third Way ... could be the sucker play of the year!

or i could need to get away from the computer

I think Jay Rosen nailed it when he said that Palmieri should have told Third Way where they could shove their "clarification" (to paraphrase).

CAP is not a blog publisher.

I am not a blog commenter.

This is not a sentence.

This comment has no irony.

As Ben Smith says, there are real consequences if Third Way is seen to be disfavored by CAP.
To the extent that CAP's agenda differs from Third Way's, some tension between voices on each side is inevitable (and even useful; if some facts are used in the discussion, truth might be hammered out).

Third Way's desire to paper over the differences and sing Kumbaya (if that's what it is) isn't helping anything - ignoring substance doesn't make it go away - but what do you expect from hyper-timid incrementalists, eh.

The bigger problem I have with this episode is how the medium became the message: Palmieri's intrusion of a message onto "Matt's" blog forcibly and intrusively made the point that it's not Matt's blog and never was. He only posts what he's allowed to post. (Worse, if Palmieri can post something acknowledging that it's not by Matt, she can also post something *not* acknowledging that it's not by Matt. That's what gives it that Soviet-apology touch.)

To some extent or another this is true of a lot of organizations that support blogs - even Blogger and ScienceBlogs probably *could* do this. But a lot of those organizations have principles against doing that. CAP just proved they don't have such principles, and that's apparently a shock to a lot of people.

honey,

it's ok for CAP to "disallow" Matt's comment, on her own blog, on their front page. don't hijack Matt's blog in what amounts a show of force and power over their "star" blogger.

she made a huge mistake and CAPs credibility has taken a hit. she needs to own up to it, write procedural rules that'll help in the future with this sort of thing and then move on.

Come on! You can't possibly believe this. You can't possibly believe that it would be illegal for a think tank or whatever the hell CAP is to spout the party line.

It's illegal for an enterprise with thinkprogress.org's tax status to engage in partisan advocacy. That's why Matt no longer endorses candidates on his blog.

And it's illegal to coordinate political expression with political parties without complying with campaign finance limits.

These laws may be honored in the breach, but they do definitely exist and the Supreme Court has upheld them (by bare majorities). As I said, CAP is concerned enough about them that they have told Matt not to endorse candidates.

IT is actually illegal for CAP to collude with the part.

It happens all the time, but thats a testament to how corrupt this country is, not any sign of actual legality. Laws in this country are only enforced against the poor and middle class.

Posted by: chris (perhaps) | December 22, 2008 11:23 PM

The bigger problem I have with this episode is how the medium became the message: Palmieri's intrusion of a message onto "Matt's" blog forcibly and intrusively made the point that it's not Matt's blog and never was. He only posts what he's allowed to post. (Worse, if Palmieri can post something acknowledging that it's not by Matt, she can also post something *not* acknowledging that it's not by Matt. That's what gives it that Soviet-apology touch.)

Except according to Matt, he posted it.

All morning there were repeated demands for an accounting of the process, and when an accounting is given, its ignored and people cling to the process that people had imagined based on the textual clues, because its easier to be outraged over the imagined process.

This seems very simple to me. Matt, for now and probably for as long as he blogs for CAP, has complete independence. Making clear that his opinions are his own, and not necessarily those of CAP, facilitates that independence, and is in fact essential to it. If he had to toe certain lines to make sure his opinions didn't run afoul of other CAP positions, he would lack independence. If he had to say things he didn't agree with in order to continue to write for CAP, he wouldn't have independence. But, being able to say anything he wants, provided that either he or CAP (preferably he) periodically make clear that they're his opinions, not CAP's, is indepedence, full stop.

Like all good bloggers, Matt's strength is honesty. If he stops being honest for any reason, including pressure from his paymasters, people with the ability to think critically will know, and his readership will suffer (as will his readers!).

It's illegal for an enterprise with thinkprogress.org's tax status to engage in partisan advocacy ... And it's illegal to coordinate political expression with political parties without complying with campaign finance limits.

IT is actually illegal for CAP to collude with the party.

You are both changing the subject. The original claim was the for CAP to "hew to the Party Line" would be potentially illegal. This claim is absurd and false.

Except according to Matt, he posted it.

Yeah, but that’s MRD (Well he would say that wouldn't he?) statement. I don’t know what happened, but it’s certainly more convenient if the big brother aspect of the post was just a sleepy oversight.

On another note I imagine that the Third Ways folks were more bugged about the implication that they weren’t really a think tank, then that they a “bull shit” think tank.

"IT is actually illegal for CAP to collude with the party."

The specific laws restricting "political coordination" are very limited.

One can do quite a bit of colluding without even coming close to running afoul of the law.

You are both changing the subject. The original claim was the for CAP to "hew to the Party Line" would be potentially illegal. This claim is absurd and false.

One can do quite a bit of colluding without even coming close to running afoul of the law.

What do you mean by hewing to the party line? If you mean generally anticipating what the party might want them to say, sure, that's legal. But taking instruction from the party is certainly not legal for CAP to do. And no, Petey, ANY actual "colluding" on message would be illegal.

What is true is that if you simply were to take whatever the DNC is saying and parrot it, without ever talking to them and coordinating your message, that would be in the clear. But that's far, far different from "colluding" with the Party or what I understand "following the Party Line" (i.e., what Communist front groups used to do) to mean.

"And no, Petey, ANY actual "colluding" on message would be illegal."

I will repeat that the laws on the books regarding political coordination are far more circumscribed than you seem to think.

One would have to be exceptionally stupid or reckless to run afoul of them.

"But taking instruction from the party is certainly not legal for CAP to do."

I'll also repeat that CAP is the Party at the moment. You can't illegally coordinate with yourself, even if you try.

And tangentially, CAP's unique position is what makes Matthew's situation subject to different rules than usual in a way that Ezra doesn't seem to appreciate.

When Matthew moved to CAP, he shifted from being a blogger to being a press secretary. He's now speaking for CAP, like it or not, which carries responsibilities that he seems constitutionally incapable of bearing.

Petey | December 23, 2008 3:22 PM:

When Matthew moved to CAP, he shifted from being a blogger to being a press secretary. He's now speaking for CAP, like it or not, which carries responsibilities that he seems constitutionally incapable of bearing.

Except, he didn't. He just went from being a source of a small number of extra hits elsewhere on the Atlantic site to being a source of a small number of extra hits elsewhere on the CAP site.

Blogging from CAP, he links to CAP pieces a lot more than if he still blogged at the Atlantic, but that's just proximity ... put a policy-oriented blogger next to some people working on developing policy and background for policy analysis and he'll do some blogging on that.

What do you mean by hewing to the party line?

It's a figure of speech. It means "following the rules;" it applies to any set of rules from any organization, not just a particular political party.

It may derive from the old mythological notion that Communist Party members were supposed to know and espouse the "party line" on any issue.

Petey, if you're still out there do you care to specify which "core Democratic principles" MY regularly deviates from?

P.S. - the idea that blogging from CAP makes him a defacto CAP press secretary is really pretty silly.

Dilan,

I am assuming you have never actually run a political campaign on behalf of an interest group.

Collusion - or as industry folk prefer to call it, coordination - is mainstay in political advocacy. It happens all the time with particular campaigns and candidates asking for the "coordination" of a group's resources or political messaging efforts to suit that campaign. I have witnessed it first hand.

In fact, as to the legality, it is bit more nuanced - along the lines of Petey's argument - than you may think. In may be illegal in name, but many activities can be considered legal if done properly.

And yes, you are being evasive by changing the subject concerning hewing the party line.

Anyone familiar with Washington think tanks and their output will realize the amount of line hewing if not out right coordination.

A glancing familiarity with the history of AEI and the Heritage Foundation would surely disabuse you of your uninformed application of legalistic principles on this matter.

To boot: While CAP is nominally independent, is it a surprise that its head - and current Obama transition coordinator - is John Podesta, former lobbyist and Clinton COS. He has spent his life hewing the party line. And where there may be deviations, they are assuredly mild and meant to not jeopardize Democratic electoral aims. And if they did, phone calls would be made to temper such runaway sentiments.

The meme "Third Way" = "Incrementalist Bullshit" is now thoroughly ensconced in my brain.

Published on: www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com

Historically, information sources provided to American citizens were limited due to the few methods available to the public, such as radio, TV, or news print. And also this information was subject to being filtered and, in some cases, delayed. This occurred for a number of reasons, which included political ones.
Now, and with arguably great elation, there is the internet, which can be rather beneficial for the average citizen.
Soon after the advent of the internet well over a decade ago, web logs were created, that are now termed ‘blogs’. At that time the blogs were referred to as personal journals or diaries visible on line. As time passed, blogs became a media medium, and blog communities evolved into addressing topics that often were not often addressed in mainstream media, as they crossed previously existing political and social lines. In addition, blogs provide immediate contributions by others, the readers of the posts of the blog authors, instead of the cumbersomeness of opinion and editorial pieces historically and not always presented in such media forms as newspapers or magazines.
The authors of blogs vary as far as their backgrounds and intent of what they choose to address on their blogs exactly, just as with other media forms. Some are employed by the very media sources that existed before them. Furthermore, they are not exonerated from the legalities of what is written, such as cases of libel. While we can presume that bloggers like to write, they may not be quality writers, yet several are in fact journalists, as well as doctors and lawyers, for example. But to write is to think, which I believe is a good quality one should have. Regardless, a type of Socratic learning seems to be occurring due to the advent of blogs.
Yet presently, blogs have become quite a driving force for those with objectives and issues often opposed by others, and therefore have become a serious threat to others. These others may be politicians, our government, or corporations- all of which have been known to monitor the content of certain blogs of concern to them for their potential to negatively affect their image or their activities previously undisclosed. This is why blogs, on occasion, have become a media medium for whistleblowers, which will be addressed further in a moment.
While one disadvantage of blogs is the potential lack of reliability, blogs however do allow in addition to the comments of its readers the posting of authentic internal or confidential documents that typically are not created to be viewed by the public, yet are acquired by certain bloggers. For example, blogger Dr. Peter Rost, a whistleblower himself, not long ago posted a newsletter published by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca on his blog site, and this newsletter was given to him by AstraZeneca's employees who called themselves the ‘AZ Group of Seven’- with the intent of this group being to bring to the attention of others the illegal activity of off-label promotion of one of AZ’s cancer drugs promoted by their employer. Yet this particular concern by AZ seven, by surprise, is not what caught the attention of so many who viewed the posted newsletter by Dr. Rost and was read with great interest by others. It was instead a comment included in this newsletter that was stated by former regional AZ manager Mike Zubalagga, who was being interviewed by a district manager in this newsletter. Mr. Zubalagga, who in this newsletter posted on Dr Rost's blog site, referred to doctors’ offices as ‘buckets of money’, which caught the attention of several readers. This and other statements by this man were in fact published in this newsletter clearly not reviewed before its publication. . Again, the statement and the newsletter created by AZ was indeed authentic and further validated due to the content being in the written word, which added credibility.
Mr. Zubalagga was fired the next day due to this ‘buckets of money’ comment due to the effect it had on the image of his employer. His manager resigned soon afterwards from AZ.
Blogs, one can safely conclude, reveal secrets.
And there have been other whistleblower cases on various blogs in addition to this one described a moment ago, which illustrates the power of blogs as being a very powerful and threatening media medium of valid information disclosure that others cannot prevent from occurring.
This, in my opinion, is true freedom of information- largely free of embellishments or selective omissions. It’s a step towards communication utopia, perhaps, yet a force that has the ability to both harm and protect many others.
Yet again, the information on these blogs should not be taken as absolute truth without proof to verify claims that may be made, as with other media sources. Of course, documents that are authentic is an example of a good validation source. And this, in my opinion, is the blog’s greatest value, combined with the comments on blogs from the growing number of readers who are allowed to contribute to the subject matter so quickly, which fuels the objectives of the blogs, which may be a type of Socratic learning.
Like other written statements, some on such internet sites are composed with respect of the written word. Others are not. It's the freedom that may be most appealing of this new medium which has the ability to convert citizens into journalists who want to contribute to an issue of their concern they share with the blogger often with great conviction and accuracy.
Because we, the public, have a right to know what we are entitled to know and what we want to know. This is especially true if the information disclosed on blogs could potentially be adverse to our well-being.
Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power.
“Information is the seed of an idea, and only grows when it’s watered.” --- Heinz V. Berger
Dan Abshear

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