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Beyond the election news cycle
A public radio producer called me the other day to discuss his idea
for a story on the Internet's role in the recent US midterm
election. The hook? He'd heard that Internet use on election day
reached levels not seen since 9/11. That didn't ring true for me,
though I did find one report
that Internet Broadcasting, a publisher of
TV-station websites, had its biggest day ever.
As it turned out, the producer had based his idea on that same report.
Well, if the total amount of Internet use wouldn't be the story hook, I
counter-proposed, perhaps the evolution in styles of Net use could be.
Internet Broadcasting's banner day, for example, was Wolf Blitzer's Waterloo.
The poor guy looked pathetic on CNN, pointing to computer-generated
graphics and reading out the numbers. Who wouldn't want interactive
graphics, more
numbers, and above all on-demand access to our own state and local
results? For years, it's true,
people have been going online for that experience. But this
election may have nailed TV's coffin in terms of data delivery.
Then there was the dizzying interplay among mainstream media, blogs,
and online video on such issues as poll-watcher
intimidation and e-voting glitches. In one case, amateur video flowed
"upstream" when the New York Times mentioned a RedState.com item
about a YouTube video that claimed to document intimidation
of poll watchers in Philadelphia. In another case, pro video flowed
"downstream" when BradBlog posted a
segment from Lou Dobbs Tonight on e-voting problems.
In the end there was no "upstream" or "downstream", just a swirl of
currents. Let's hop in the kayak and take a tour.
The Wall Street Journal sounded this theme:
When Americans go to vote tomorrow, a new breed of activist will be on guard, monitoring polling stations for everything from voting-machine glitches to long lines to registration snafus.
[WSJ.com]
Michelle Malkin spun it thusly:
Behind the civic-minded facade are far Left radicals whose main concern is not in ensuring a fair election process--but in preemptively undermining and delegitimizing it.
...
Like I said yesterday, bring a camera if you can.
[Michelle Malkin]
To help us answer questions about the use of cameras in polling
places, she usefully
cited the Center for Citizen Media's Election
Day FAQ. In a followup, the Center noted:
When we asked for your questions, we never expected that 80% would be
about taking photographs or videos at the polls. [Center
for Citizen Media]
What did the followup guidance say about the Pennsylvania rules that
applied to the poll-watching video-blogger in Philadelphia?
Unfortunately, nothing conclusive.
The New York Times, meanwhile, twice mentioned the fact that
RedState.com text-blogged the Philly video-blogger. First on Wednesday:
Erick Erickson, RedState's chief blogger, also included a report of
poll watcher intimidation in Philadelphia, along with a link to a
video on YouTube that appeared to show a certified poll observer
(armed with a video camera) being blocked from a polling station.
[New York Times]
(Oddly, the Times devoted almost as much space to its coverage of
RedState.com as RedState.com did to either of its brief
items
on
the incident. Even more oddly, neither of those seems to include the link to
the video.)
Then today:
Right-leaning RedState.com reports alleged intimidation of
poll-watchers in Philadelphia... [New
York Times]
The comment thread attached to one of those RedState.com items included this exchange:
Q: What is your source for this? Philly.com is not reporting anything
like this.
A: http://cbs3.com/local/local_story_311120726.html
[RedState.com]
And here is the story cited by the commenter:
Officials said approximately a dozen claims were filed stating they
were being interfered with as they entered the D and Clearfield polling
place in Kensington.
In the 19th Ward, several complaints were filed regarding voters being told who to vote for.
The District Attorney's office and Philadelphia Police are looking into the accusations.
"We sent our District Attorney's detectives, the police department was
also called and Federal, F.B.I. agents were called out as well to make
sure that whatever was going on in East Division stop and that no
voter was intimidated," said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn
Abraham. [CBS 3]
Whew. We really have stepped through the looking glass. It is strange (and
disheartening) to see that the New York Times didn't particularly
care whether there actually was poll-watcher (or voter) intimidation
in Philly,
but was fascinated that a "right-leaning" blog reported "alleged"
intimidation, and that the
allegation took the form of a YouTube video.
It is strange (and exhilarating) to realize
that, with a bit of web search and navigation,
we can so easily triangulate on that
intimidation flap from a dozen different perspectives. We don't need
to depend on the Times to deliver that story any more than we need to depend
on Wolf Blitzer to recite our congressional results.
It may take another election or two before the strangeness wears off,
and all this seems familiar and unremarkable. The sooner the better because,
while it's true that we enjoy powerful new access to information
about our political system, it's also true that we've barely scratched
the surface.
Here's a crazy idea. I checked www.phila.gov to see what
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn Abraham's team concluded about
alleged intimidation. Of course I found nothing there about that
investigation, or indeed any investigation. But why not? Why should we
depend on reporters and bloggers to dredge up this information? It's
public information; we fund the activities that produce it;
we should expect to get it through the web and directly from the source.
Last summer I wrote about Washington DC's extraordinary experiment
in digital democracy and transparent government. So far as I can tell,
that story is still a sleeper, both inside and outside the Beltway,
for the old media and the new. I'm waiting for everyone to wake up and
notice. After that, I'll
be waiting for everyone to stop noticing and take it for
granted. That'll be a great non-story.
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