| A Montana Cowgirl post morphed from a flare-up to a full-on issue, thanks to a Matt Gouras piece that questioned our former blogger's work and writing habits.
Everybody's talking about it. And you probably want to know what LiTWers think about it all, etc & co.
I'll start with the easy stuff first. The "man purse" post was unfortunate; Cowgirl got called out; she apologized. The incident is in no way representative of anything larger, unlike other recent homophobic comments that were representative of a movement's ties to anti-gay activists, militia groups, white supremacists, and other undesirables. The post isn't even representative of Cowgirl's views on LGBT rights, which she ardently supports. My only regret about the whole thing is that I wish I had the thoughtfulness to have called out Cowgirl before Jamee Greer did.
If Matt Gouras had written the incident up for the AP simply to "balance" the recent Tea Party comments, I'd call it bullsh*t journalistic hack-ery and false equivalency. But Gouras - clumsily - used the incident to unload everything he knows about Cowgirl onto the public. Posting the Department of Labor documents that weren't available to the public - the location of an Internet hookup in the state Capitol Cowgirl was using - etc & company. There are implications here - the worst being that Cowgirl is blogging on the state taxpayer dime for unnamed public officials in Helena - but no evidence. After all, Gouras' implications have explanations: Cowgirl's not a state worker; Cowgirl's a state worker, but blogging on personal time; Cowgirl's getting her "scoops" from tips sent her way, not fed to her by an overlord (lord knows my inbox is filled with innuendo, gossip, and tips); etc & co. That is, I don't know how, where, and when Cowgirl blogs. Unless there's proof of wrong-doing, I'm going to assume she's following the law and acting ethically.
As for Cowgirl and Left in the West: well, we aired our opinion about freeing Cowgirl from our front-page status back in July on the blog. Basically we felt featuring an anonymous blogger affected our credibility. Our readers know who we are and our professional political relationships and can easily place our posts in that context. Throwing an anonymous blogger into the mix implied -- to our readers -- that we approved and abetted their views, and that their opinions were being elevated under our "authority." In reality, we don't have the time to impose strict editorial guidelines, and have no interest in dictating the ideology of diarists, and we liked Cowgirl because she wrote posts that sparked controversy, not because of any camp or faction she may have belonged to. But we were called out by some folks we respect, so we decided to change our policy.
On a more general note, I still strongly believe in anonymity for bloggers. There are people who would face professional or personal retribution for expressing their opinions and deserve a shield for free expression. Some great, well-thought-out commentary comes from anonymous sources, and I'd hate to lose that. That said, I don't think anonymity should be used to free bloggers or commenters from issuing baseless accusations or rumor. But then, that should go for everyone.
But I do find all of this fascinating. The Internet is a big, chaotic place with all kinds of information, little of it regulated or policed. Imposing etiquette, standards, and ethics on all the various sites and writers the way we typically do in print media is impossible. That means the onus of sifting through information and enforcing an ethos of responsibility onto writers falls on us, the reader. We need to read everything critically and reward those who do well with our clicks.
Are we up to it? |
