Good For The Goose, Not For The Gander?

If you replaced the words "Huffington Report" with "The New York Times" or any other MSM organization in context of the George Clooney flap of the last couple days, Arianna Huffington would be leading the charge to skewer and denounce that entity. Instead she, and the vocal bloggers always scouring news reports for the smallest mistake, have said, well, hardly anything. What are we to take from this episode – that bloggers operate under a separate set of rules than what they hold the MSM to?

If CBS News had quoted someone by name and that person had later claimed it to be a false representation, we would have been scrambling to find out what exactly happened and would get no quarter from the bloggers until we did (that's basically what Clooney has said about a post that appeared under his name on Arianna's blog). Just a couple months ago, The Washington Post ombudsman made a factual mistake in a column which resulted in a huge controversy – complete with cries of censorship, bias and hate speech.

The Clooney-Huffington disagreement has made the gossip pages in print, and gotten a response from Huffington on her blog (as well as one from a fellow blogger).

Huffington herself calls it a "misunderstanding," and we're willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on that. One wonders whether she'll think twice in the future before deciding whether or not to give others the same courtesy, but I somehow don't think anyone should hold their breath for it. Still, there is at least one blogger who's asking questions. This, from David Mastio at InOpinion.com:

So, about this little kerfluffle going on between Arianna Huffington and George Clooney about the supposedly/maybe/maybe not fake blog posting by Clooney that appeared on The Huffington Post, who cares right? Well, maybe there are some editorial page editors around the country who ought to be a little nervous.

Last April, Tribune Media Services announced that they were going to syndicate blog posts from The Huffington Post to newspaper opinion sections around the country. I assume they've had some success since I have spoken with a few editorial page editors who say they signed on.

The whole journalism ethics thing is not what really pisses me off here. I think it is great that TMS is trying this idea out. And I am glad that there are editorial page editors out there interested in trying out new stuff. (Hey, call me.) Newspapers have to be doing new things.

But when TMS appears to be sending fake content out to newspapers – blog posts that are written by PR flunkies and Huffington Post staff writers – then newspaper editors are naturally going to feel burned. And they'll be less likely to try out other new things.

It was a testament to the power of blogging, and it's why I remain, despite the dustup, an unrepentant evangelist for the value of bringing to the blogosphere some of the most interesting voices of our time that are not already there.

So while this is definitely the last time I'll rely on an okay-to-publish from a publicist, it most assuredly won't be the last time I'll recruit for the blogosphere and try to get the uninitiated to blog. Even folks who don't know a hyperlink from a permalink or who need a Blogging 101 tutorial and a lot of hand-holding in the process.

But, some have asked, is a blog still a blog if it contains repurposed material? My answer is: absolutely. Who cares if the ideas were first expressed in a book, a speech, a play, or an interview? The medium isn't the message; the message is the message. With the right medium providing the needed amplification.

I find it amusing and tragic. It's amusing that anyone would think of having ghost writers for blogs — which are, by their essence and definition, personal. How Hollywood can this go: 'I'll have my person link to your person'? And it's tragic that we're so addicted to celebrity that anyone would go so far as to manufacture the voice and views of a star just because he is a star. Surely we have learned that people's opinions don't get smarter when they get famous — quite to the contrary. Huffington was wrong to try to create a faked-up post under Clooney's name — and wrong to want to. This now affects the credibility of all the stars who post there. They need to guarantee now that all the views of the famous there, no matter how amazing, are written by them: No bionic opinions allowed. If you don't care enough to write a simple blog post, then you don't care enough.