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anonymous blogging credibility

Discussion: Should Blogging Be Defined?

By Jill Kuraitis, 8-03-07

Note:  Blog links appear at the bottom of this article, to minimize distraction in this unique case.

The Idaho blogosphere is zinging with a discussion about anonymous blogging.

MountainGoat, who writes under that name without further explanation, first raised the issue by wondering if The Idahoan is actually written by Congressman Bill Sali’s guy, Wayne Hoffman.  The Idahoan lists no actual humans as contributors.

Neither does MountainGoat.  In fact, the blog presents a photo of a mountain goat, which is another discussion altogether.  (One that comes to mind:  should we restrict the internet to mammals only? Personally, I’d like to write as a bug.)

Wednesday, MountainGoat wrote:

There are probably as many reasons for blogging anonymously as there are anonymous bloggers.  Some reasons might include fear of retaliation or retribution.  Others might include protecting a job, a family member or a family member’s job.  Why a staff member of a U.S. Congressman would blog anonymously is a question not easily answered.

Some questions that can be easily answered are:

• Does the staff of an elected official have an ethical obligation for complete disclosure? 

• Are there situations where anonymity by a public official might be acceptable and others where it might not?

• Should the public’s expectations include identity disclosure by the staff of an elected official when the blogging includes advocating for that official or his policies?

• If a congressional staffer is blogging using government time and resources, should that information be made public?

Most people would answer “yes” to all of those.  So why is a staffer for Idaho Congressman Bill Sali apparently blogging anonymously at The Idahoan? Let’s see what we can find out.

Today, editorial page editor and blogger Kevin Richert at the Idaho Statesman jumped in with a thoughtful post. He opens with: “Only in the blogosphere: An anonymous Idaho left-wing blogger is trying to out an anonymous Idaho right-wing blogger.” But that didn’t show his hand, as it suggests. He writes,

“MountainGoat connects some dots between The Idahoan and Hoffman, a former reporter who left the Idaho Statesman in 2005, worked on various GOP campaigns in 2006 and joined Sali’s staff in March. The Idahoan site domain was registered in Hoffman’s name in December 2006.

So does that make Hoffman — the public face of the Sali staff — a stealth blogger on the side?”

Richert contacted Hoffman, who told him he wasn’t blogging, he was “collectively contributing commentary.”

MountainGoat responded:

The questions are legitimate and not unexpected; it does appear hypocritical on the surface.  Digging deeper though, the difference between The MountainGoat Report and The Idahoan, and their anonymous authors, couldn’t be more striking.  That difference is why it was important to make The Idahoan’s identity public.
As we are all aware, this country was founded on dissent and protest with perhaps the most well-known dissenter being Thomas Paine who anonymously advocated revolution in the pamphlet, “Common Sense.”

Blogging is this generation’s form of dissent.  That’s not to equate blogging with “Common Sense” or to suggest that it carries the same weight, but the principle is the same.  It’s the little guy standing on a soapbox with a small megaphone just trying to make a difference.  Every blogger has their own soapbox or cause and, as with Paine, sometimes require anonymity.

If The Idahoan had just been another anonymous little guy on a conservative soapbox there would have been no need for public disclosure.  That wasn’t the case, however.

When a staff member of a government official cloaks himself as just another little guy on a soapbox with a small megaphone, when in fact he carries the very big megaphone of an elected official, that’s deceptive.  And when the goal of that staff member is to build the blog into, in the words of The Idahoan, “a news source that will one day rival that of the mainstream media,” there is a word for that.  It’s called propaganda.

The difference between dissent and propaganda couldn’t be more striking.

A post from another anonymous blogger, IdaBlue, reviews his exploration of The Idahoan and comments that it’s clearly a right-wing blog. IdaBlue is clearly a left-wing blog, although its writer, who won a David Neiwert Award for his election editorials, has a conservative streak on a few issues.

Since The Idahoan’s domain is registered under Wayne Hoffman’s name, it’s safe to conclude he’s writing it.  Besides, he told Richert at the Statesman he is. 

Is anonymous blogging a good or bad thing, or neither?

When you read an anonymous blog, how much credibility do you give it?

Should federal employees be allowed to blog at all?

What do we think of voluntary standards – a sort of Code of Conduct for bloggers?

Raise your own questions, too, and let’s discuss.

Links:
The Idahoan
The MountainGoat Report
IdaBlue
Kevin Richert’s Blog

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