Hold Your Tongue

Last semester, my Facebook page got a major facelift. When I began working for the Daily Tar Heel, I had to remove all evidence that I had ever had an opinion on anything, lest it compromise my integrity as a journalist.

Rationally, I knew why I had to do that. I knew that if people read my stories, then looked on my Facebook page and saw that I had supported Obama in the 2008 election, they might make certain assumptions. But as I cancelled group memberships, and changed my political affiliations, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Did I really have to hide who I am to be a good journalist?

This question nagged at me the whole semester. I could not justify hiding my opinions. And in the age of the Internet, I'm not sure that I have to.

Within the ever expanding blogosphere, more and more journalists are maintaining personal blogs. Blogs that investigate, report and yes, even analyze breaking news and continuing stories.

The danger with political blogging, however, seems to be the risk of the proverbial soap box. Some bloggers seem to use their power to broadcast their opinions to the world to rant about what they think is wrong with government, without providing enough detail to support their claims. Bloggers can also really hurt the impact of their stories if they undermine them with sarcasm, even if they are making valid points (see Michelle Malkin's live feed from the 2010 SOTU).

But are bloggers like Malkin, or members of Daily Kos, the future of political journalism? Or is the new model for political blogging going to follow the centerist, "unbiased" (if there can be such a thing) Talking Points Memo?

With newspaper circulation declining, it seems that some papers have turned to blogs to help boost their Web site views. But some papers are not doing a very good job at blogging, it would seem.

Take the News and Observer. Their blogs WakeWatch and Under the Dome seem to be more of their old formulaic stories, just placed under the header "blogs." It seems that posts are more updates than actual analysis. So why are they called blogs?

As we move forward in rethinking journalism, we must remember to rethink. What good is a new format if it's the same writing style, the same stories?

Perhaps we need all kinds of blogs, the same way we need different news stations, radio stations and papers. We need the variety of opinions, the wide number of stories and versions of stories to find the truth.

Blogs are quite possibly a large part of the future of political communication. Perhaps if candidates and representatives maintained blogs (or their staff did), their constituents would better understand how they were being represented. There is danger in this, however, in that citizens would have to be discerning in what they believed. Citizens would probably have a greater responsibility to fact check on their own, rather than just relying the source at face value.

As journalists, we need to make a decision: are we ready to have opinions? Or do we keep writing straight news stories? Do we keep what we think to ourselves? Or follow the old rules?

A Sip of Tea, anyone?

In the past two years we have seen a lot of political "change." President Obama launched the first successful multimedia campaign, sending text alerts to voters, getting donations online, and using Facebook to build a legitimate party base. Obama started a "grassroots" movement among voters who wanted something different in Washington.

However, in this modern age, can any political movement really be "grassroots" anymore?

According to Princeton University's WordNet Search, grassroots is defined as "of or involving the common people as constituting a fundamental political and economic group."

But what we perceive as grassroots, may in fact just be a new type of PR.

Consider the 2008 Obama campaign. Behind each Facebook group, text message or tweet, there was someone carefully drafting the campaign message. By directly involving voters, the campaign was making it seem as if the movement was starting with the people.

The campaign even went so far as to select the top contributors, those most likely to comment or post on the campaign, and set them up with their own blogs about the campaign and Obama's message. By making the voters the political commentators, it seemed that Obama's support was really a "grassroots" movement, while in fact it was simply a carefully orchestrated use of modern technology.

The PR people probably recognized the number of people they could reach via the internet, and so took the campaign into previously uncharted waters to engage voters that might not have otherwise been reached.

The most recent "grassroots" movement in the news is the Tea Party Movement, a group that largely believes that with recent legislation, the government has overstepped its Constitutional boundaries.

While Tea Party organizers claim the movement to be strictly "grassroots," critics have called the group "Astroturf," driven largely by cable news and the political and financial support of key political figures. The group's Web site, TaxDayTeaParty.com, seems to be creating the same kind of campaign that Obama did in 2008, even down to the text alerts. The site also features recent news and endorsements of candidates for the 2010 elections.

But where did this Web site come from? Did someone create it and pay for the corporate text number out of their basement? Hardly.

The Web site was paid for by Liberty First, a PAC. Liberty First's principles are relatively clear: "Less government, less regulation and lower taxes." The group also does not believe that special interests have a place in politics:

"We support candidates who place liberty (the Constitution) first when casting a vote or making critical political decisions. Not special interests, not populist issues (smoking bans, government healthcare, etc) but LIBERTY FIRST."

The PAC is essentially a Tea Party organization committee, but this hardly seems grassroots. It seems like just another political action group organized by politicians, not a group of citizens. However, once again the interactive multimedia campaign makes it seem like all the political ideology of the Tea Party is coming directly from the people.

So back to the main question: In this modern age can we have a truly "grassroots" movement?

Probably not. But then again, maybe we never did. Maybe now we can just see the wizard behind the curtain pulling the levers and pushing the buttons to make things happen. With modern technology, we can be more civically engaged, but we need to pay attention to where what we read comes from. For example, the Tea Party Web site is not from the mind of Larry Jones in Arkansas, but probably from PR people who know what they're doing. Same with the Liberty First Web site. And the Obama campaign Web site.

Modern media and social networking tools make it easy to make our voices heard, but it still is completely our responsibility to make sure that our voices remain true to our beliefs.