I am writing this after consulting with the other editors of this site. In that sense they know what I am posting, but ultimately this is MY statement, and mine only. Those who agree can so indicate in the comments.
The Deeds campaign attributed a quote to RK as a whole when that quote should have been attributed to an individual. They also selectively quoted from that post in a way with which I personally had trouble. Below the fold I will address the contents of that email. But for now let the following be clear:
1) RK (that is the current name of this site) has made no endorsement in the Governor's race. Many of us are friends with both Brian and Creigh.
2) The presence of information about either campaign on the front page does NOT indicate an endorsement. We often promote diaries by others that we view as interesting for the sake of discussion. Those of us who can post directly on the front page also want to ensure that people not on the mailing lists of the various candidates around the state can be assured that they can come here for important news. That includes endorsements received by either of these two men, or of other Democratic candidates for office.
3) Statements which are not supported in fact and which may be defamatory are not acceptable practice here. While in the heat of the moment all of us may be prone to excessive rhetoric, we ask those who post - and that includes us - to consider the impact of what they write, and will on occasion ask that a post either be modified or taken down. We do reserve the right to edit or remove any post that we believe violates the rules of the site.
For myself - I like both Creigh and Brian. I have no intent of making a decision about whom I will support until we get through the current cycle. We have a presidential race to win for the first time since 1964, a Senate seat to take back, and a number of House seats we hope to pick up. While I will read material on the gubernatorial and other statewide races, my focus will remain on 2008.
And please go below the fold for the particulars.
In an email sent out announcing Creigh being endorsed by the International Union of Police Associations, we encountered the following:
And on the popular website Raising Kaine:"The endorsement came largely because Deeds is a leader who can be counted on to go beyond the empty rhetoric that we often hear during the campaign process.
"...with Creigh's background he has illustrated how he is someone whose policy agenda will look after the best interests of the public and the officers. In other words, the law enforcement community believes that Creigh Deeds is the candidate most qualified to be the Commonwealth's chief executive officer."
The material is from a post by Bryan Scrafford entitled Creigh Deeds Picks Up Another Big Endorsement that we chose to put on the front page because of the newsworthiness of the endorsement.
The first sentence quoted is Bryan's analysis of why the IUPA made the endorsement, and needs to be read in that context.
Between the first sentence quoted and the material that begins with the ellipsis the Deeds email omitted several important things. It is perhaps understandable that they omitted the blockquote of the endorsement Bryan was citing. The email completely omitted this paragraph, which perhaps they felt was unnecessary to distribute to their readers, even though it reinforces the power of the IUPA endorsement:
One thing that is worth noting is the fact that the I.U.P.A. usually endorses a candidate based upon not only an examination of the candidate's record, but also by discussing the candidate with the local organizations and officers. In other words, there is a significant amount of time and energy that goes into deciding which candidate they should endorse in a particular race. Furthermore, it is also important because the local people are primarily the ones who will be interacting with the candidate and will perhaps have a more direct idea of which candidate would be the best person for the job.We will not quibble with omitting this, nor with omitting the blockquoted material from the endorsement.
But we have objection to the selective quoting of only part of Bryan's final paragraph. I will reproduce the entire paragraph, putting in BOLD the words that were omitted:
One might wonder why Creigh is running for Governor instead of Attorney General if he has a background that would be so useful for the law enforcement community. A representative for the I.U.P.A. told me that it's important for the chief executive of a state to be someone who has illustrated a commitment to public safety. Furthermore, with Creigh's background he has illustrated how he is someone whose policy agenda will look after the best interests of the public and the officers. In other words, the law enforcement community believes that Creigh Deeds is the candidate most qualified to be the Commonwealth's chief executive officer.
The omission of the beginning of the paragraph would have the reader believe that it is Bryan's assertion about what the law enforcement community believes, rather than his restating the implication of what he was told, and totally ignore the way the paragraph is framed.
Please note, Bryan may well agree with the assessment by IUPA. But the question he raises at the beginning of the paragraph is important for context.
Let me now speak for myself alone.
1) Please, if you are going to cite this blog, get the name correct: it is now RK, no longer Raising Kaine. The insertion of "Hussein" between the two letters that name the blog is an acknowledgement of our support of Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
2) When citing something, unless the posting says it is a statement of the blog or of all the editors, please describe accurately. In this case it would have been sufficient to say that "one writer at the popular blog" and our objection to that part of the presentation would go away.
3) Please, we all know the dangers of quoting out of context. Please take the time to ensure that what you quote is not misrepresenting the statement of the writer. I think a fair-minded person, looking at the entire last paragraph, might have some questions as to whether what was quoted is a fully accurate representation of the author's intent.
Again, we welcome information about all Virginia Democratic candidates. And we are delighted to be a source to which people turn for more information about Virginia politics. But as my nursery school teacher used to tell us, please play nice.
Peace.
Cherry-picking and quoting out of context is actually standard practice. Everyone does it. Creigh will do it, brian will do it, Warner, Connolly and Feder will do it.
They will take pieces of news articles and highlight the positive (or alternatively highlight the negative about their opponents) in their communications with the public and with their supporters.
You guys at RK need to decide who and what you think you are. If you're a news source, then expect to be treated like a news source. If you're something else, well then, by all means please explain to us what that is.
But in my mind, blogs-- or at least the information they publish-- should be treated as though it's news (or a news source).
Mail pieces done by almost every political campaign in Virginia will take a quote and represent it simply as having come from the paper. it will not get sourced simply as "one writers opinion." I suppose you could argue that what was quoted in this case more like an editorial, but given that it was promoted to the front page by "editorial decision" from RK...it's fair to source it as having come from RK. That's the standard practice.
Why should you guys be treated any different than other members of the press or other media outlets?
... I'm not sure what someone slipped in his latte but despite "how many people spend their day keeping [him] from looking like a fool," the rant made up for it.
Unpaid bloggers are not going to donate a Tuesday night to watch a four-hour hearing on the tax rate, and then a couple of hours more to communicate what they saw to everyone else. They're not going to slog through 400 pages of documents to figure out that a city employee spent public money on new tires. Let alone do that over and over again.I don't know what blogs Luzzato has been reading but the Virginia blogosphere is full of examples of bloggers doing exactly that. But bloggers aren't the problem, Don. We are just a small part of the evolution. Just as TV eclipsed radio, so has the internet eclipsed newspapers. Radio isn't gone, though, and newspapers don't have to become extinct, either.
Exactly.
That said, the Deeds email perhaps left the impression that RK itself said this, and that is not correct. I don't think this was intentional, and I wonder whether this lack of nuance with respect to a cite that constituted a breech of etiquette, warrants a relatively dramatic diary like this. Perhaps a private email to the Deeds campaign would have done the trick, rather than a public pronouncement that in the long run will create bigger problems than it will fix.
With that in mind, I sincerely hope that this does not presage a limitation on promoting diaries to the front page in the fear that people outside the community view them as some sort of endorsement by the editors. The other side of the coin is that if a diary is not promoted, will that lead to cries of "Foul" by the offended candidate's supporters? Silly question. As long as RK remains "neutral" in the race, of course it will.
Perhaps it would be useful if, when promoting a diary, the editor explained why they were doing so in a pithy comment like, "Promoted by Lowell because an excellent analysis," or "because it is interesting first person account" or "because it contains important news" or whatever the reason is. And if a piece is promoted because it is about a candidate RK has endorsed or likes a lot, even if the diary itself is less than stellar, the editors can reveal that also, i.e. "Promoted by Lowell because RK thinks Tom Perriello is a great candidate."
Similarly, RK editors could explain why a diary might be recommended by one of them, but not posted to the front page, particularly if it is because RK has endorsed a candidat. For example, after RK endorsed Obama, it obviously wasn't going to post pro-Clinton or anti-Obama diaries, even interesting, well-written ones, to their front page. This is perfectly appropriate, of course, but a good diary about Hillary Clinton may have said, "Recommended by Lowell, but not promoted to front page because RK has endorsed Obama."
Anyway, I offer that as a suggestion that would increase transparency on the editor's decision-making while still encouraging people to write interesting diaries.
That all said, I really have no problem with the current schema, but as the 2009 race heats up, these will be thorny questions, and IMHO, explanations like this tend to raise more questions than they answer.
But we need not quibble. The words are there for anyone to look at and reach their own conclusion as to whether the PR truncated quote changed the meaning of the thought expressed in the diary.