New York Times’ Sneering Stereotype of Bloggers

Brian Zick

Daniel Glover and Mike Essl imply that all bloggers identically operate with a conflicted interest lack of ethics, because a few have (cue foreboding music) accepted money, from candidate electoral campaigns for their consulting work. The authors repeatedly refer generically to "bloggers" as if they are all completely alike, except for partisan orientation. No mention was made of the fact that the primary reason most all these bloggers went to work for their respective campaigns is because the bloggers shared the candidates' ideological goals in the first place. Nor was mention made that many bloggers volunteered for campaigns and received no pay whatsoever. Conveniently, no mention was made either about incomes received by James Carville or Paul Begala or other paid campaign consultants who routinely appear on TV and write newspaper articles, promoting the candidates who pay them. Nor was any mention made of folks like Armstrong Williams, self-decribed "journalists" who were paid explicitly to write propaganda. More comment from Steve Gilliard and Atrios.

The text is from the poem “QUADRENNIAL” by Golden, reprinted with permission. It was first published in the Poetry Project. Inside front cover photo by Golden.
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