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June 22, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
The Brouhaha Over Blog 'Censorship' In Kentucky
Five days ago in Virginia, a Washington Post reporter chastised bloggers for too often making their Web sites "clearinghouses for rumors, innuendo, political attacks, misunderstandings, half-truths and gossip." Yesterday, a blogger in Kentucky proved the reporter's point with an innuendo-laden attack on the governor of his state that worked his fellow bloggers into a conspiratorial frenzy.
The blogger in question was Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report, who had a run-in with state government late last year over getting press credentials to cover the legislature. He accused Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher of vindictively blocking access to Bluegrass Report after it was cited in a New York Times front-page story that was critical of the governor.
Kentucky bloggers and prominent national bloggers pounced on the story once Nickolas took his accusation public Wednesday. The blogs that echoed his charges of censorship motivated by corruption included Daily Kos, MyDD, TPMMuckraker, Talking Points Memo and Think Progress. All of those blogs, like Bluegrass Report, typically support Democrats.
Unforunately, the political bloggers did what they too often do when motivated by partisanship: They reported first and asked questions later. And most never asked questions at all.
Instead, they just ran sensational and unsubstantiated headlines like this:
-- "Kentucky Governor Blocks Popular Blog;"
-- "Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher Blocks Blogs;"
-- "Fletcher Flunkies Blocking Liberal Sites;"
-- "Kentucky Government Censors Political Watchdog Site;"
-- "In Soviet Kentucky, The State Blocks You!";
-- "Welcome To The People's Republic Of Kentucky;"
-- And this from a blog called Blast Furnace Canada: "The National Socialist Republic Of Kentucky."
All of the entries linked readers back to the major blogs, only one of which appears to have bothered to contact state officials in Kentucky to ask a few basic questions: Are blogs being blocked? If so, why? And what are the criteria for blocking them?
Those aspects of the story -- like the fact that blogs now are considered to be among "the top categories of Web sites accessed with no business value to the commonwealth," as a state official told me -- only surfaced when the mainstream media starting covering it. There are now articles by AP, The Enquirer in northern Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
AP, The Enquirer and the Herald-Leader also reported a key fact, one ignored by the blogosphere: that Nickolas once worked as the campaign manager for now-Rep. Ben Chandler, who ran against Fletcher for governor in 2003. The Courier-Journal identified Nickolas as "a Democratic blogger." But TPMMuckraker didn't even bother reporting the connection between the offended blogger and Chandler when noting Chandler's objection to the alleged censorship.
The facts do not support Nickolas' initial allegation. As noted at The Kentucky Democrat, Bluegrass Report was not the only blog blocked -- and the list of blocked blogs reportedly includes Kentucky Republican Voice.
"This was not a 'deep throat' conspiracy to silence a vocal critic of the administration, as some liberal and extreme bloggers fantasize. It just so happened that the 'political content' number was up, along with several other categories of non-work-related Web content, late last night," Leland Conway wrote at The Conservative Edge. "State workers arrived this morning only to find that they wouldn't be able to surf the Net in search of the latest political scandal; they would simply have to do their work instead."
Now that the facts have been reported by the MSM and noted on the blogs, the conversation is beginning to shift toward the broader issue of whether Kentucky's government, and U.S. governments in general, should be blocking access to blogs on government-owned computers when media sites are not blocked. That gets to the question I addressed in my latest column about bloggers starting to earn official recognition as media.
Bloggers like Nickolas, who has earned a solid reputation in Kentucky for his work on Bluegrass Report, deserve that recognition even if they are not technically "journalists," and governments should think twice about treating citizen media differently than professional media. But Nickolas may have done himself and his fellow bloggers harm in that regard when he made an unsubstantiated accusation against a political foe without checking his facts first.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: The reference that said The Conservative Edge "apparently has not been blocked" has been removed. Jill Midkiff, the state official cited below, tried to access that site this morning after seeing my blog entry and could not gain access.
UPDATE II: Evidence to the contrary, Bluegrass Report is sticking to its self-centered storyline. "There is little doubt this was a deliberate banning of [Bluegrass Report]," Nickolas wrote today. "This administration has hated the scrutiny they've been under since this site launched last year, and then they lost it after The New York Times story that was critical of them."
Other blogs, including Personal Democracy Forum, continue to echo the conspiratorial theory that a Republican governor is punishing the blog of a Democratic nemesis.
EDITOR'S NOTE: When the allegations of politically motivated blog censorship broke yesterday, I sent an e-mail to Fletcher's press secretary for comment. A few hours later, I received an e-mail from Jill Midkiff, executive director of the public information office with the state Finance and Administration Cabinet. Here are her responses to my questions:
Beltway Blogroll: Several blogs are reporting that the state government of Kentucky is blocking access to blogs that are critical of the governor. I am interested in the stories because I monitor developments related to blogs for NationalJournal.com in Washington, D.C., but none of the stories I've seen indicate that a state official was ever contacted for comment. Could you tell me, Is access to the blog Bluegrass Report being blocked on state of Kentucky computers? Is access to other blogs being blocked?
Jill Midkiff: Access to a number of Internet sites has been blocked over the last two years through the use of a service the state subscribes to called Webwasher. Sites that have been blocked include, pornography, erotica, computer games, gambling, shopping and dating sites to name a few. Most recently, the additional categories blocked are:
-- Entertainment/motion picture: Includes Web sites in the area of cinema, television, program information, video-streaming, infotainment, entertainment/gossip news, and Web sites about celebrities and related content.
-- Auctions/classified ads: Includes Web sites with online/offline auction sites, auctions houses and online/offline advertisements from collectors and antique dealers.
-- Humor/comics: This category contains sites with jokes, sketches, fun application comics and sites with other humorous content.
-- Newsgroups/blogs: This category contains Web sites that enable the sharing of information such as on a bulletin board. Includes Web logs and guest book servers as well.
-- Malicious Web sites: This category contains Web sites with malicious source code, such as self- installing Trojans and viruses that exploit security vulnerabilities in browsers or firewalls.
BB: If so, why? Does the decision to block access (assuming that is the case) have anything to do with a recent New York Times story about the governor that cited Bluegrass Report?
JM: [The Commonwealth Office of Technology] subscribes to a national service that blocks categories, not particular sites. Therefore, we cannot tell you specific names of sites that have been blocked.
Two weeks ago, we ran a report on Internet usage, and these were found to be the top categories of Web sites accessed with no business value to the commonwealth. If an employee believes they should regain access to any site for official business, they may make that request through their supervisor. This is not a new practice. It has been in place for at least two years but must be periodically updated.
BB: Have any of the bloggers who are writing about this bothered to contact the governor's office for comment on the accusations leveled at Bluegrass Report and elsewhere?
JM: There have been a few calls from bloggers, but most of the inquiries have come from the media.
BB: And one last series of questions focused on blogs generally: What is your impression of the political blogosphere in Kentucky? What are its good and bad points? Has the governor reached out to blogs, and if so, how?
JM: I can’t speculate on the governor’s view of blogs. The action taken is about the appropriate and efficient use of state resources and state employee time.
Posted by Danny | 09:48 PM
