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The Federal Election Commission held public hearings this week on how to apply campaign-finance rules to the Internet, and bloggers had a prominent place at the witness table. But their role went beyond testifying; they also served as sources for other media, covered the story themselves on their blogs, and even fired a few verbal missiles at their enemies.

The bloggers who testified included: Michael Bassik of The Online Coalition; Duncan Black of Eschaton; Mike Krempasky of RedState; Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos; and Matt Stoller, a founder of The Blogging of the President and now a blogger for the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Jon Corzine.

Kristinn Taylor of FreeRepublic.com, a Web site with features similar to a blog but that bills itself as an electronic bulletin board, also spoke. And Jim Boulet and Karl Sandstrom represented two organizations that publish blogs: English First and OMB Watch.

You can read the written testimony of Krempasky and Moulitsas on their blogs. Those blogs also address some of the issues that arose at the hearing and beyond, such as a media exception for bloggers, blogging while at work (see here and here), and one company's proposal for a "blogger identity seal," which Krempasky called "the dumbest idea I've heard today."

In addition to testifying, The Online Coalition's Bassik covered parts of the hearings for Personal Democracy Forum (see here and here). Michael Cornfield, another PDF contributor, recapped the hearings in a concise, Q&A format, while PDF interim executive editor Chris Nolan warned that if government gets to define who qualifies as media, it also could take away those rights someday.

"The idea that the Federal Election Commission is going to set up exemptions for media, and that the body will decide who gets what, strikes me as uh, un-American," she wrote.

Eschaton's Black said he is "rather crazy" from the experience and frustrated that no one has yet answered these questions: "Why is somebody who prints up and mails out weekly vanity newsletter entitled to the media exemption but not me? Why is Michael Savage entitled to the media exemption but not me? Why is Salon.com entitled to the media exemption but not me?"

Following the example of The Talent Show, Black took a poke at the FEC by newly branding his site "an online magazine of news, commentary, and editorial" that would not be subject to campaign-finance regulation. Now he is no longer a blogger but a "publisher/editor/chief political correspondent/cat photographer/scifi critic/media critic/missing persons expert/blogger ethics expert/janitor for an exciting new online magazine."

Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, the "blogfather" of Daily Kos' Moulitsas, live-blogged the FEC hearings after a morning stint on C-Span with Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits. Hynes had kind words for Armstrong after the appearance, saying that he "struck me as a pretty cool and knowledgeable guy." But Hynes was not nearly as impressed with Black or Moulitsas a week earlier.

"Having these two buffoons testify before the FEC," Hynes wrote, "is rather like hiring Howard Dean to serve as greeter at your local Wal-Mart Superstore -- not exactly putting your best foot forward. They represent most of what is wrong with political communication, whether it is online or elsewhere."

Scott Ferguson of The Classless Society added that Black and Moulitsas "have had hugely incestuous relationships with special interests. It would be like George Steinbrenner and Marge Schott defending the baseball antitrust exemption -- their lack of cred and/or style could mess things up royally."

Black directed a barb of his own at a fellow FEC panelist. "I skipped out on the middle session because I really don't need to hear what Kristinn of the Free Republic has to say about anything," he wrote. And Moulitsas reserved his ire for Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

The two have been at odds since early June, after Darr submitted written comments criticizing the idea of a media exemption from FEC rules for bloggers. Although Moulitsas said Darr softened her rhetoric somewhat in her prepared testimony to the FEC, he called her a "clueless embarrassment" to GWU.

"Carol Darr is supposed to be promoting democratic values in the online space," he wrote. "Instead she is attempting to muzzle bloggers. All in the name of protecting the special privileges and privileged status of traditional journalists."

With brutal talk like that, you'd think bloggers had spent a lifetime in Washington rather than just a couple of days.

Posted by dglover at July 1, 2005 09:04 AM

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