Blogging For Freedom

Beachwood Reporter, July 2 2006 Link

When the news broke in May that the National Security Agency had created a huge database of Americans' phone records, incensed portions of the blogosphere cranked up their message machines, demanding that something be done.

But what?

Daily Kos blogger Da Buddy had an idea. In an "ACTION ITEM" posted on Kos, Da Buddy urged readers to "bombard" the NSA with Freedom of Information Act requests asking for records involving their own phone numbers. "And they HAVE to respond within 20 days, by law!" Da Buddy assured confidently.

Not a bad idea, but a rather unknowing one. Da Buddy's mob could indeed expect a response within 20 days - most likely a letter from the NSA explaining why the agency would need more than 20 days to respond to their requests.

The Freedom of Information Act is a jewel of democracy, but an imperfect one. The NSA's own FOIA policy (pdf), for example, states that "In the event the Director of Policy cannot respond within 20 working days due to unusual circumstances, the chief of the FOIA office shall advise the requester of the reason for the delay and negotiate a completion date with the requester."

So good luck with that.

Freedom geeks are not only celebrating Independence Day this week, but the the 40th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act. That makes it a particularly good time to consider FOIA's many loopholes as well as the opportunity presented by the growing swarm of bloggers and citizen journalists to press for fixes both federally and, perhaps more importantly, in state FOIA counterparts. Because one thing we've clearly learned in the last 40 years is that the use of the Freedom of Information Act is neither free nor always informative.

As anyone who's ever FOIAed a government agency in Chicago, greater Cook County, or the State of Illinois knows, there's almost no way to force an agency to give you what you're entitled to, much less in a timely manner at reasonable fees, particularly if you are a little guy without, say, the lawyers of the Tribune Company backing you up.

Even if you can get the records you are looking for, you may be discouraged by the cost you will incur. It's not uncommon for agencies around here to charge a quarter a page for copies of FOIAed records. If you're doing serious research on a regular basis, this adds up quickly. An Evanston clerk I dealt with recently (on a non-Beachwood matter) rationalized their quarter-per-page price this way: The person who gathered the records for me could have been doing something else with that time.

The clerk assured me that Evanston's Law Department made sure everything was legal before setting the copy price, but the policy clearly violates the Illinois FOIA statute provision that "Each public body may charge fees reasonably calculated to reimburse its actual cost for reproducing and certifying public records and for the use, by any person, of the equipment of the public body to copy records. Such fees shall exclude the costs of any search for and review of the record, and shall not exceed the actual cost of reproduction and certification, unless otherwise provided by State statute."

The state's Public Access Counselor, Terry Mutchler, agreed and sent the city a letter, but otherwise I've got no recourse, because neither she nor I have the time or money to go to court.

In all its mundanity, my experience with Evanston city government is just a sliver of battles frustrating citizens on a daily basis across Illinois, and often with much larger stakes than my own. It is also antithetical to the spirit of the Freedom of Information laws designed to undergird our democracy.

That's where electromob action comes in. Da Buddy is actually onto something. Bloggers are better positioned than any other group of concerned citizens to throw their political heft - and conspicuous tonnage of spare time - behind Freedom of Information. Aside from the obvious - FOIAing the crap out of as many agencies as possible - I propose focusing on four main goals:

1. Investigative and punitive provisions in FOIA law. Public officials who deny access through deliberate obfuscation and delay should be charged with felonies - and if they are trained as lawyers, disbarred. After all, shouldn't conducting government in secret be considered treasonous?

2. Training requirements for all government employees who handle public records. In Illinois, the seeds are in place.

3. More and better searchable online databases of government documents, which can circumvent much of the cost and hassle of digging up and copying records in the first place. Some government agencies - hello, Cook County Circuit Court - are still unaware of what the Internet can do for them. After all, searchable records free up clerks like the ones in Evanston to attend to the rest of their pressing duties, while shifting copying costs to the folks at home. The investment cost of digitizing records - well - will have to borne sooner or later. Why not now?

4. Strengthening state FOIA laws. Reporters who have spent time in other states - Florida, for example - are amazed at what isn't available in Illinois. (Illinois was the last state to pass an open records law, and it's not exactly a thing of beauty, Scott Reeder's astonishing success notwithstanding.) The impact is as much cultural as anything; the expectations of Chicago reporters are often so low it's easy to think they deserve what they don't get. Citizens deserve more, though.

If the institutional media isn't interested in the consistent, aggressive use of public records, and there is no indication they are, perhaps bloggers across the political spectrum can fill the void.

The Sunlight Foundation has just shown what bloggers and other regular folk can do for Illinois. On June 14, foundation reporter Bill Allison revealed that our very own Dennis Hastert owns 138 acres of land near the route of the Prairie Parkway, a proposed road that would run between I-80 in Grundy County and I-88 in Kendall County. Allison wrote that Hastert has "secured $207 million in earmarked appropriations" for the project. Note that this break came not through state or local records from Illinois, but federal documents - Hastert's 2005 financial disclosure form.

The Sunlight Foundation's welcome Assignment Desk is meant to empower citizen journalists to do their own digging through public records. Chicago is sorely lacking in blogs that dig into our hulking, opaque institutions, but some sites seem to have laid the groundwork. At the CTA Tattler, for example, editor Kevin O'Neil has managed to attract the "CTA Insider" - an anonymous CTA employee who provides biting commentary on everything from seat cushions to Pink Line jam-ups. Now imagine what the CTA Tattler could do if it introduced public records pursued through FOIA into its work.

Perhaps the notorious drag of obtaining documents from the government would trip up the immediacy that so invigorates bloggers. But at some point blogs have to evolve - and that means the addition of reporting, with public records perhaps the ripest tool.

(In her New Republic cover story about InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds, Christine Rosen summed up the stagnation of most political blogs: "Reynolds's blog consists largely of links to news or opinion articles and other blogs followed by comments consisting of such profound observations as 'Heh,' or 'Read the whole thing,' or 'Indeed.' (These are recurring tropes whose centrality can't be exaggerated.) What Reynolds lacks in analysis, he makes up for in abundance of content. On any given day, he'll provide his readers nearly 20 entries - or, if you can stomach it, more.")

And as shown by Pajamas Media's now-dormant IraqFiles in which Iraqis, a military expert, and others sifted through captured Iraqi documents, blogs can connect people who are willing to volunteer expertise and knowledge that's actually revealing.

"One of the things I hate about a lot of political blogs is that they choose really stupid things to write about," Thad Anderson, of Outraged Moderates and Download for Democracy, said recently. " Some people don't really understand my point of view, in that they don't put the same value I do in seeing the actual documents myself. But I think that, in an era of distrust and cynicism, focusing on the documents themselves is especially effective."

Blogs in the MSM: Rating the Roundups

Online Journalism Review, Jan. 24 2006 Link

Traditional news sources are telling a contradictory story about political weblogs. While blogs are presented as the engines of a rejuvenated political debate, MSM sources often link readers to posts that merely restate ideas that have been repeatedly rehearsed by politicians, activists and mainstream commentators.

Most Internet users have yet to start using blogs -- about 73 percent of them, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project -- and it is reasonable to predict that some will try to learn about blogs through major news sources' blog roundups. In the absence of a clear consensus on the purpose and merit of blogs, readers who are new to blogs may misjudge the roundups as measures of public opinion. To help readers access new and informed ideas in political debates, MSM sources may have to betray the democratizing potential of blogs and take the risk of judging individual bloggers on their expertise and originality.

The traditional media kept a watchful eye on political blogs during Judge Samuel Alito's Supreme Court confirmation hearings this month. Washingtonpost.com's "Who's Blogging?" feature tracked bloggers who linked to Post stories, as the site has done since fall 2005. NYtimes.com ran one of its sporadic blog roundups for the occasion. And Slate shifted the focus of its regular "Today's Blogs" column to the confirmation hearings.

The roundups delivered a heavy helping of stridently partisan blogs and threw in some nonpartisan legal blogs like SCOTUSBlog, but only a few moderate voices like Donklephant were included. The roundups make American political debate look more stagnant, confusing and hopelessly narrow than it really is. How can a first-time blog reader tell the difference between bloggers trying to evolve new ideas and those trying to vindicate their preconceptions? Should he or she rely on the in-house bloggers of publications and political groups or the freestanding, unaffiliated citizens who supposedly define the medium? If roundups answer these questions more often, they will offer a powerful vehicle for introducing readers to blogs that offer more than simplistic partisanship.

A disconnected debate

It's true that the decisive lure of most popular political blogs is that they tell their readers what they want to hear and tend to acknowledge opposing ideas only to deride them. Pete Welsch found empirical evidence of this tendency last year during his research as a graduate student at Indiana University. Welsch first analyzed two conservative blogs, Instapundit and Outspoken, and two progressive blogs, Eschaton and Mouse Musings. He found that they rarely linked to the same sites -- or to sites that advocated the opposite political ideology. As he researched a wider sample, he did find liberal blogs linking to conservative ones and vice versa, but, Welsch says, "A lot of that is going to be one side liking to the other and saying, 'Look at this garbage.'"

Political bloggers represent themselves and their like-minded readers. Editors of online blog roundups say they don't want to make their readers think otherwise. They just want to keep bloggers from stealing traffic and give readers access to a broader debate. But the latter can only work if MSM roundups lead readers to bloggers who think independently and draw on relevant experience and knowledge.

It is difficult to guide readers to a balanced list of blogs efficiently and maintain quality control at the same time, admits Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com. "The Post generates between 100-200 articles a day, and to have someone continually cruising the blogosphere to keep on top of things just isn't a good use of staff time," he said in an e-mail interview. The Post's "Who's Blogging?" uses Technorati, a blog search engine, to gather links to blog posts that link back to Post stories. All a blogger has to do to get linked is register with Technorati and include a link to a given Post story. This usually yields a list that mixes insightful blogs in with boring ones. Many of the latter simply quote several paragraphs from stories and add a paragraph of their own comments, which are often predictably party-line.

"Sure, sometimes the blog posts don't add much to the story, but we're willing to accept that reality in exchange for being open to debate," Brady says. "We can't be accused of picking and choosing."

Technorati also allows browsers to sort results by "authority" -- the most-linked-to blogs being the most authoritative. This at least rewards the blogs that readers (or other bloggers) consider most reliable, but it doesn't take into account other factors that constitute authority, like education, professional experience and demonstrated expertise.

Those qualities would help, for example, when scanning comments on blogs linked to "Pushing the Limits of Wartime Powers," a news analysis that ran in the Post on Sunday, Dec. 18. Roughly paraphrased, the liberal blog comments one stumbles across range from "President Bush thinks he is on a mission from God" to "President Bush is kind of like Big Brother" to "I hope President Bush gets impeached." Of course, the Post linked to conservative blogs as well, but the liberal links just demonstrate the lack of originality and variety among blogs within either category. At this point, more than a month later, there are many more posts linked to the story, and much more variety, but who's checking this late (except perhaps extremely dedicated blog readers)?

Nitpicking the blogosphere

While it is not impossible for a strictly partisan blog to provide insight, specialized blogs like SCOTUSblog consistently offer something more useful than the party line -- running expert commentary that would not fit into the typical consumer newspaper story. Such blogs certainly exist to help legal experts talk with each other, but there's no reason that the average reader can't use them to supplement traditional media stories with technical and historical detail.

Slate's daily blog roundup, "Today's Blogs," seems most effective at guiding readers to those supplements -- and it provides a model for other roundups. Writers hand-pick links on a few selected issues each day, and also provide background information, if available, about those bloggers. This guides new blog readers through a muddle of pseudonyms, anonymity and conjecture to bloggers who just might know what they're talking about. It's also crucial to serving a Web-only magazine's audience, which tends to know more about blogs. "You have to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff," says "Today's Blogs" editor Rachael Larimore. "We want people to know that they can come to us and find out what an authoritative blogger is saying."

Larimore says this makes Slate more friendly to readers who aren't used to blogs. "We don't like to assume that our readers are familiar with everyone," she said.

The New York Times can be picky as well, having offered blog roundups only sporadically. Two recent roundups accompanied stories that involved criticism of The Times itself -- the jailing and testimony of Times reporter Judith Miller in October and The Times' revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to perform wiretaps without obtaining warrants. Whoever organized the Miller-related roundup seems to have paid attention to bloggers' qualifications, judging by the first three blogs linked to: Talking Points Memo by Washington Monthly writer Joshua Micah Marshall; First Draft by Tim Porter, whose resume includes 16 years as an editor at the San Francisco Examiner; and DavidCorn.com by David Corn, author of "The Lies of George W. Bush." Corn and Marshall have their politics tattooed on their virtual faces, but they accompany their ideological assertions with observation and informed analysis.

The Times' most recent roundup, as of this writing, accompanied its coverage of the Alito hearings. The linked blogs again appear to be hand-picked; many do not even link to Times coverage. This approach seemed to reveal the most variety, especially on the third night of the hearings. The Times roundup included posts on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to the small legal and procedural technicalities of the hearings. But to get the same variety on Washingtonpost.com, readers had to skim through each separate Post story on the hearings. A Post story that focused on questions about Alito's views on abortion, for example, linked only to posts that discussed that specific story and emphasized abortion.

Sure, Slate and The Times can be accused of picking and choosing, but that doesn't preclude variety or openness. On the contrary, a well-maintained blog roundup seems to give readers access to a wider political spectrum. And, because blogs are so easily accessible, a well-focused roundup might help publications encourage their readers' curiosity. Few readers will put down the newspaper to look for the latest number of Harvard Law Review, but they might be willing to click away to a blog like SCOTUSblog for a few minutes of helpful elaboration.

Larimore says she and other Slate writers keep their own lists of blogs to check regularly, supplemented by Technorati searches and Google blog searches. The disadvantage of manual roundups is that they require more time and resources -- and so can only be included with a few stories. In that sense, the hand-picked roundups won't be as valuable to readers who want to explore the broadest possible range of opinions on the broadest possible range of news. Automated roundups may still be useful to readers when MSM sources are unable to offer hand-picked roundups.

Rallying the troops, ignoring the moderates

Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Kathryn Jean Lopez of The National Review's The Corner blog agree on at least one thing: They represent only themselves and perhaps some of their readers.

"'General public' people probably aren't watching the [Alito] hearings at all, because even some of our political-minded types have been dozing off," Lopez said in an e-mail as she blogged on the hearings. She added: "People often tell me they come to us on National Review Online to find out 'what conservatives are thinking.' Sometimes, that proves more difficult -- and interesting -- than they thought, because even us conservatives -- even those sitting around the same editorial table (real or cyber) -- are not monolith on a whole host of issues."

But Moulitsas says: "Every blog focuses on particular subject matter and hence attracts a like-minded audience. That's all you'd ever be able to measure."

By linking to these partisan voices (even if they are more complicated than expected, as Lopez suggests), political blog roundups tend to exaggerate the perception that American voters are firmly divided along party lines. Roundups acknowledge non-partisan and moderate blogs, but not as often as they link to stridently partisan blogs. Justin Gardner, leader of the ideologically mixed group blog Donklephant, thinks Americans are more often centrist than party-line, and he hopes blogs and blog roundups will eventually reflect that. "I like the position that we're in," he says of Donklephant. "We don't have to rally the troops sometimes when we know that the poll numbers aren't what we would want."

CNN Internet Reporter Jacki Shechner, who primarily talks about stalwart right- and left-wing blogs during her short blog segments on "The Situation Room," said centrist bloggers don't get enough coverage. "I think we'd be remiss if we didn't start including them some more," she said.

New connections

Though they too often show new blog readers a narrow spectrum of ideas, roundups might reinforce the role of traditional news outlets while improving the debate for those already immersed in blogs.

Technorati CEO David Sifry hopes roundups will at least help bloggers and established journalists share traffic and ideas. "This is actually a synergistic relationship and not a parasitic relationship," Sifry said.

As third-party monitors, mainstream news sources can also increase communication among bloggers who wall themselves off with RSS feeds and one-sided blogrolls. Laer Pearce of the conservative Cheat-Seeking Missiles, who was linked in a Times roundup, says he'll pay more attention to such features in the future, if only to explore the blog world outside of his own ideological circle.

Roundups can enrich debate by encouraging both new blog readers and bloggers themselves to digest conflicting and nuanced opinions. "I'm more apt to add blogs I like to [my RSS feed] than ones that I don't," e-mails Pearce. "That's a mistake, because intellectual honesty, not to mention fresh ideas, depends on exposing yourself to a broad diversity of views." This all seems obvious, but it's a good reminder that even a medium with the potential to open debate can give people tunnel vision.