In recent days, rightwingers and other critics (e.g., The New Republic) of the Progressive blogosphere have been swarming like pestilent rats, spreading their black plague of rumor and innuendo to anyone within reach. They have gone so far as to charge Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (aka, "Kos") and his co-author (and key Mark Warner advisor) Jerome Armstrong with backing candidates in exchange for money ("pay-for-play"), and with "fraud" in the case of Armstrong. Now, Markos fires back, threatening (not very subtly) to initiate libel suits against those who are spreading these smears against him and his friend Jerome:
...it's quite funny how they're trying to parlay the nothing they have into something, anything at all. It's the price of success, and we knew the knives would be coming out after Vegas, so we shouldn't be surprised.But I do admit being surprised by the sheer creativity of their invented attacks, such as my supposed "pay for play" scheme. Let me be crystal clear. I deny that charge completely. I have stated the sources of my income and they do not include money from people asking me to shill for anyone or anything. Problem for these writers, is that the law doesn't protect such defamation. The truth is an absolute defense to libel cases. If they have evidence for those smears, then they have nothing to fear. But if they, say, recklessly invented all manners of illegal or unethical activities by me without bothering to see if they bore any basis in truth, then they'll have plenty to worry about.
So watch out, right-wing bloggers. People like you and you and you and....
There were allegations about the Webb cartoonist being paid to blog - I would fight that also if it is wrong.
I think that bloggers should form a code of ethics and stipulate if they follow such ethics or not in their blog. We aren't journalists - don't get me wrong - but I think we have obligations in that arena.