Gerstein: So What If I'm Getting Paid By Lieberman?
February 28, 2007 -- 11:56 AM EST // // Post a Comment
* Updated below: CJR Daily weighs in.
Dan Gerstein has responded to my post below. He says there's no problem at all with the fact that The Politico published a piece by him attacking some of Joe Lieberman's high-profile foes at the same time that he was collecting money from Lieberman:
[W]hether I am a paid, unpaid, or former advisor to Lieberman was not relevant to my column. I was not writing in any Lieberman capacity or on his behalf -- I was expressing my own opinions. And the content of the column was not about Lieberman -- it barely mentioned him -- but about the blindness and irresponsibility of many liberal bloggers. (I will leave it to readers to decide whether Sargent's process point undercut my arguments or unwittingly reinforced them.)The question that I keep coming back too is what would have been gained by highlighting my current status as a paid adviser in this particular context. The reason for disclosing that kind of information is to avoid hiding conflicts of interest or presenting interested opinions as independent ones. As I noted above, that was not at issue here -- both the column itself and the tagline at the bottom made clear my Lieberman affiliation. So what would have been the point?
What would have been the point? Why, how's this for a point: Because disclosing that he is getting paid by Lieberman would have constituted telling the full truth. The description of Gerstein as a former communications director alone was a misleading one at best. It's unwittingly revealing indeed that the basic goal of being as truthful as possible simply doesn't appear to enter into the equation for Gerstein here.
Look, here's the issue in a nutshell. If you're going to publish a long piece attacking the credibility of some of Lieberman's higher-profile critics by name...
Liberal Bloggers Demonstrate Their Political Immaturity, Democrat Suggests
...then readers of that piece deserve to know that the piece's author is collecting fees from him. Is there any chance that Politico bigs John Harris and Jim VandeHei disagree with that? Doubtful.
Gerstein claims it's not "relevant" that he is an adviser to Lieberman. But come on, now -- Gerstein's piece wasn't merely intended as a scholarly discussion of the blogosphere. Whether The Politico's editors knew it or not -- and it's my bet that they didn't fully grasp this -- Gerstein's piece was also obviously about settling old scores, about payback for the fact that Lieberman repeatedly came under fire from the liberal blogosphere during the campaign. More to the point, Gerstein's piece also attacked the credibility of some of Lieberman's current critics -- something that helps advanced Lieberman's current interests.
While it's true that the initial description of Gerstein established a link between Lieberman and Gerstein, that simply wasn't enough by any standard. Would we all think it absolutely fine if a newspaper published, say, a piece that contained elements attacking some Hillary Clinton critics written by a current paid Hillary adviser -- internet guru Peter Daou, say -- while identifying him as a former adviser? Nope -- of course we wouldn't.
What happened here is this: Gerstein used The Politico as a platform partly to settle the old scores of -- and to advance the current agenda of -- a paying client, but without mentioning the "paying" part. Is that really what Harris and VandeHei envision for something they're hoping to establish as the preeminently credible Web-based political publication?
Update: Atrios boils down the whole issue very neatly here.
Update II: The above has been slightly edited to correct an inaccuracy by taking "former communications director" out of quotes.
Update III: Paul McLeary at CJR Daily:
We're not saying that Gerstein is hiding his affiliation with Lieberman -- he is quoted as working for him in the other Politico story, but from a journalistic standpoint, his continuing relationship with Lieberman, and all the history with liberal bloggers that that relationship entails, does in fact taint his piece.While Gerstein claims innocence, it's important to remember that he's a political operative, and thus he works under a very different set of rules than a journalist. His goal is to push the interests of his clients, period. It's the editors of the Politico who should have known better.
Er, yes. For the record, I have no idea whether The Politico's editors knew this before the piece went up. I tend to doubt it -- I've gotta think that if they had known it, they would have put it in their description of him. But the bottom line is that it wasn't there, and it should have been.
Update IV: Crooks and Liars' John Amato turns up the volume.
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