(a) running a blog claiming to provide analysis of a senate campaign that is, in fact, secretly run by paid campaign operative from one particular side
is equivalent to:
(b) anonymously running a vocally liberal site while working for a left-leaning media watchdog site.
in (a) the author of daschle v. thune provided analysis of the senate race but withheld a key fact--that he was paid by the thune campaign. the missing fact directly raises questions of bias and the substance of his criticism of each candidate
(b) is completely different. media matters is an organization dedicated to publicize conservative bias in the u.s. media. as the site explains:
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Conservative misinformation is defined as news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda.see the difference? media matters never claims to monitor sites like eschaton. nor did atrios ever claim to provide any analysis of media matters. unlike in (a) the withheld information (i.e. atrios' secret identity during the one month that he was both employed by media matters and still posting anonymously) does not raise any conflict of interest questions. indeed, atrios and media matters both critique the mainstream media. they complement each other, they don't conflict, so it raises no bias issues with either site. yet somehow the cbs article makes it seem like these are parallel cases.
(as i was writing the above, atrios posted his letter to cbs about the article)
full disclosure/CBS news prophylactic: i guest posted at eschaton for one week. in addition, duncan black once bought me a drink. he also gave me a button that i still wear on most tuesdays
UPDATE (12/9/04): CBS has rewritten the story. they've gotten rid of some of the factual errors, but not made it any clearer why exactly atrios was unethical or violated any journalistic standards. ironically, as others have noted one clear violation of those standards is running a corrected version of the story without retracting the earlier version or, at the very least, mentioning that the article has been altered.
