Political Blogs as "Public Domain" Speechwriters?
One of the strangest adjustments for those of us who have written mostly for publication in print venues is the different nature of "publishing" on the Web. The ethics of revising something that you find out is mistaken, want to reword or to take back is complicated. And with Google's cache feature you can't ever really, fully delete your "drafts."
But to what extent are words printed in political blogs owned by anyone? I am very traditional in the belief that these words, written by me, are copyrighted by me (see notice at the bottom of this page). I would think that most bloggers would feel the same way, i.e., "Don't quote me unless you cite me."
But in the world of politics, this can become an intricate and ambiguous question. Case in point: A few months ago, Representative Sherrod Brown of Ohio (D-13th Dist.) wrote a letter to Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) concerning the nomination to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, and specifically enumerating what Brown represented as Alito's poor record on labor issues and workers' rights. Apparently, almost the entire letter was what in traditional publishing would be called plagiarized--that is, it was originally either the ideas or the actual words of a political blogger, Nathan Newman, of nathannewman.org. The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper revealed the "plagiarism" after officials from DeWine's office alerted them.
It seems like a straightforward story. As I teach my students, "If you quote someone, put the words in quotes. If you use someone else's ideas, cite them." None of them has ever retorted: "But the President does it all the time!" As I discuss in my book BLOGWARS, it is hardly a secret that a large amount of political speech credited to politicians, whether in the form of books*, addresses, letters, memos, policy directives, or debate points, is written by people other than the politicians themselves, from media consultants to staffers to professional speechwriters. There is some cynicism about this process, but nobody thinks of it as a scandal. Not even the most antagonistic and aggressive political reporter will pummel a political candidate by demanding, "Wasn't that speech written by your speechwriter? How dare you pretend those words are yours?"
UPDATE: To give a speech written by someone you have hired to write for you is certainly not plagiarism. The rules of scholarship (and grammar) are not the rules of law. (I once knew a man who listed on his resume all the "autobiographies" of politicians he had written.) But some of us lament that politicians seem increasingly unable to walk, chew gum, or give a speech without a staff of writers and consultants.** And I feel discomfort at seeing a pol waxing eloquent about some personal anecdote that is the stuff and the words of another mind. Are we electing the man or the facade? See a chapter on this subject in John Hamilton's Casanova was a Book Lover.
The same loose rules of attribution might apply to political blogs, if the blogger doesn't mind or in fact wants to be a very untransparent ghostwriter. Nathan Newman, far from being angry about the "plagiarism," attacked Senator DeWine and the newspaper story itself, arguing the following:
Who the hell cares if a Brown staffer copied a factual listing of legal cases into a letter? This was hardly a literary blog post using deathless prose for the ages. It was the facts that made this post interesting, not it's literary value.
But in typical manner, the response of the media is to ignore the substance and focus on some stupid "he said, she said" story.
Guess what, Sherrod Brown's staffer was lazy and didn't do a rewrite of my blog post or put in an attribution line. But the report on this story was even lazier, doing an easy "call the campaigns for quotes" story instead of the harder work of dealing with the substance of Alito's anti-worker legal record.
So the reporter saying that Brown's letter "was plagiarized" is flatly inaccurate. The reality is that politicians used public domain sources in a host of ways and using my blog post was no different.
We are on new ground here. A purist like me would love to be able to say that the uncited lifting of material, no matter what the source, the destination, or the outcome, is always wrong. But if almost all other forms of traditional political speech are falsely--but with a wink!--attributed to an author other than the original, then why not the content of political blogs?
Perhaps we will see the emergence of another role for political bloggers: open-source or public domain speechwriter. I still think, however, that the authentic creator should at least be consulted about and approve of what we might call the adaptation of his or her words.
*John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage is the most famous example, written by a committee: JFK, however, had no qualms about accepting the Pulitzer Prize for it.
**In point of fact, the Emperor Nero was (allegedly) the first Western politician who did not write his own speeches.
david.d.perlmutter
in Blogs & Politicians, Blogstyle, Political Roles Bloggers Play
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18 Comments
Reader Comments (18)
Newman's point is well taken. The blogosphere seems to be a "straight to the facts" kind of place, as well as "straight to the opinion".
One could view the rise of the internet in general and blogging in particular as liberal by definition since they are a marked change from the past. In that light, objections to plagiarism may be discarded in favor of the new informational pragmatism, i.e., they're just another casualty of a revolution of sorts.
At a personal level, I agree with your stance.
Cheers,
gp
This is sure to be a hot topic. Technologies dealing with plagiarism on the Internet do exist, and more are sure to come. Digital watermarking is one example. Similar to watermarks in paper money or stationary, these marks make it possible to track materials to their original author. The feature allows writers to add hidden messages to visual, audio, image or video signals that will verify their origin. Similar techniques will likely become available for authors, such as yourself, that believe (and rightly so) they should be credited for their original thoughts. ( see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking)
Disturbing, too, are technologies that make disguising others’ ideas as your own fast and easy. See this post (http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_blog_plagiar_3.html ) for information on software that can manipulate, randomize or merge text of any content or articles. Supposedly blog-zilla and Ping-Kong are programs designed for “legitimate management of multiple blog sites by publishers” and not for plagiarism…
Michael Schudson summarizes this trend of American journalism in his book The Sociology of News: "...the emphasis on strategy and tactic, political technique rather than policy outcome, the mechanical rather than the ideological. Focusing on the technical side of politics enables journalists to be professional, because they can remain apart from 'the conflicts of interest, perspective and value that are the dangerous stuff of political life.'" (pp. 51-2)
And here is a perfect example of this. Instead of focusing on the "dangerous stuff" of the real issue at stake in Newman's post and the Representative's letter, the reporter decided to report on the strategic and tactical aspect of how the representative composed the letter.
Of course, doing research on a story about Alito's record of hostility toward workers' rights would have taken a lot more time than a plagiarism scam… and what if the reporter or editor doesn't really want to tell that story?
As far as the speech writers for politicians, I think our current president has more than proven that they need them. These people are paid very well and why not? They really have a tough job.
But as far as the issue of plagiarism and blogging, I agree that proper credit should be given when ideas from a blog are presented elsewhere. An original idea is an original idea, regardless of whether it is written on rock or online. Newman’s reference to “deathless prose for the ages” is baffling to me because I have never known plagiarism to be measured by the quality of the writing. A person’s work, their thoughts and the facts they have gathered and organized, must be protected with the same vigilance in an online format as they are in hard copy format.
But the problem still remains. Not every blogger is as tolerant of plagiarism as Nathan Newman did, even in the case of being plagiarized by public domain speechwriters. There should be a law to protect the bloggers’ copyright as well.
In your post, you mentioned, “It is hardly a secret that a large amount of political speech credited to politicians, whether in the form of books*, addresses, letters, memos, policy directives, or debate points, is written by people other than the politicians themselves, from media consultants to staffers to professional speechwriters.” I think, in this case, it is justified that the politician can legally use the speechwriters work. I would imagine the speechwriters legally agree to be the brains behind the discourse of the politician. In essence, the speechwriter gives approval to the politician to use his or her work.
Plagiarism within blogging is more complicated. I think it is worse when a politician or his speechwriter, a professional, journalist or any other well-known figure fails to cite another’s material within the place of work, on the job or during the process of personal campaigning. In these cases, credibility is an issue. Full citation should be implimented and plagiarism should be enforced if it is conducted. In the case where an individual uses someone else’s idea in a casual discussion within a blog, not representing personal business or politicking, I don’t think it is as important to regulate citations. I may not be thinking straight, but I don’t see much difference between interpersonal dialogue and many blogs. During a conversation, I wouldn’t expect someone to cite me if I talked about a new movie I saw in the theater or the game I saw the night before. I think this concept could apply to blogs. I guess the main problem with this arguement would involve the definition of a casual blog discussion.
Regardless of my opinion, the Copyright Act, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-ip.php), still usually protects any short quotation from an original material as long the author is cited. They say the “fair use” of another’s ideas or material “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Therefore, to play it safe, bloggers should just cite the original author when using their material.
I say “no.” Until blogs gain respect in the msm and public opinion, bloggers should expect that their words will be plagiarized. In order to cease being seen as public domain speechwriters for whoever can cut and paste, bloggers must file (and win) numerous lawsuits against plagiarists at the Supreme Court level. Furthermore, in order to become publicly respected, bloggers must do the opposite of what their intuition tells them: they must become organized. It was not until writers and speakers began demanding protection for their intellectual property that strict laws emerged against plagiarism. Ben Franklin (the image for all that is American), plagiarized most of what he printed in “The Pennsylvania Gazette” by stealing the news directly from other news sources and from letters that passed through the post office. It probably never occurred to him that he was doing anything wrong. What has changed since then? Lawsuits and professional standards. Would-be plagiarists have to be told that stealing other’s words is unethical and illegal regardless of where the words are found. Bloggers have to care enough to voice their opposition to someone besides other bloggers in a way that forces them to listen. Unfortunately, victims like Nathan Newman don’t seem concerned, so it will fall on other bloggers to do the work.
Check out the initial report as published in Cleveland's Plain Dealer: http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1131445870289970.xml&coll=2
Secondly, that members of Congress are attending to the views and information published on blogs is a good thing. It proves the increasing role of blogs' influence on public opinion, and illustrates the importance that bloggers publish sound rhetoric based on well researched and well-cited factual information.
As an aside, it would be interesting if the party roles had been reversed in this situation, and a Republican Representative had 'borrowed' Newman's words and included them in a letter to a Democratic or even Independent Senator. What would Newmans' reaction had been?
It's PURE speculation, but I doubt Newman would have reacted as forgivingly. I arrive at this speculation based on a glance at Newman's own home page on the web, www.nathannewman.org. Another factor that informs my speculation is one of Newman's articles he published on-line in 1997, titled "Teamster Scandals and Republicans or why the Republicans should just shut up."
http://www.nathannewman.org/other/teamstersGOP.html
It might be worth mentioning Newman attended Berkeley too. Again, his e-mail address from '97: newman@garnet.berkeley.edu. So he's a progressive from Berkely...who I speculate would not have liked to lend his words to a Conservative.
Now I have a problem with a politician (or even if it were a President) using the words of someone else, which was not one of their speechwriters’ and passing them off as their own without any kind of acknowledgement or credit.
All of that said, the issue of using words pulled from a blog as someone’s own, especially in a document or public presentation is interesting. The intervention and growth of this new medium will help give birth to such new problems, issues and concerns. Does ownership to ones words posted on an Internet post (public domain) have the same claim as scholarship or publication? Why not? Yes, this is not scholarship work, but it is a product produced by someone and that individual should be given credit unless permission is given by the author for someone else to use as his or her own. If this is a new media and we are going to treat it as such (as seen by politicians that are already using it to assist in public opinion arena), then blogs should be treated just as a newspaper or any other published article would be if quoted or used in public communication. A public speaker, in most cases, would not use the exact words of a published newspaper article and try to pass them off as their own. Just as john444 argues, intellectual property, whether it is music off the Internet or words lifted off a blog, should be treated the same. Why should the content on blogs be treated any differently?
Relating an earlier issue brought up on this blog of whether this new medium will have an impact on political decision-making, the example of the representative using words for correspondence from a blog as his own to another politician may shine some light on that question. Despite a staff member probably just being lazy and using somebody else’s words, the blog did have an impact on the process of political debate.
The comparison between public officials using their own staff’s ideas and using bloggers’ ideas is interesting. But in my mind, it just doesn’t hold water.
Sure, when you plagiarize, you’re passing off another’s ideas as your own (just as in political speeches). But plagiarism is not illegal because it’s lying. Plagiarism is illegal because it’s stealing.
The political speechmaking practice may be based on a fiction, but it’s not based on theft. And that’s the difference between using your staff’s ideas (whom you’ve paid and who have agreed to give you their ideas) and using a blogger’s. The blogger hasn’t had any part in the agreement. And that’s stealing.
If bloggers are to develop as new speechwriters, I hope it’s only with their permission.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, to plagiarize is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source”. There is nowhere in the definition that exempts blogs. If blogs are to become a style of journalism, then bloggers should retain the same rules and penalties for plagiarism as other journalists have.
Of course, political bloggers are really "blogging it up" because, again, this is yet another means of communicating to the public their views on any particular subject matter in chances they will win our vote. Also, to no surprise, females are blogging in large numbers. How many times have you heard that females like to talk a lot? How many times have you heard females voice their opinions (whether we like it, or want it or not)? Way too many times. This is not a surprise to me, or to many, I am sure.
Blogging is just another means of communication with the masses, and I am certain that there will be something else before long that "they" will come up with to do just about the same thing - COMMUNICATE! And, I am sure that politicians and females will be at the top of that list, also. Will "they" ever stop coming up with new ways to communicate? I do not think so. It is a primal instinct to communicate. Blogging is just another avenue to do so. So, to ever think that communication will cease to exist is only to fool ourselves. For as long as we are able to communicate, we will!