Color Me Disgusted--Updated--Welcome Captain's Quarters Readers!
By
this story about two blogs which were covering the Daschle/Thune race in South Dakota. As you may be aware, over at Kerry Haters, we adopted John Thune's campaign with a "Thursdays 'R' for Thune" fundraising effort. We raised several thousand dollars thanks to our readers.
In covering the race, I relied a great deal on
Daschle v. Thune, a blog authored by South Dakotan Jon Lauck. There was never any doubt in my mind that Lauck was a partisan for Thune. But I had no idea he was a paid shill for the campaign.
The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the National Journal first cited Federal Election Commission documents showing that Jon Lauck, of Daschle v Thune, and Jason Van Beek, of South Dakota Politics, were advisers to the Thune campaign.
The documents, also obtained by CBS News, show that in June and October the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000. Lauck had also worked on Thune’s 2002 congressional race.
Both blogs favored Thune, but neither gave any disclaimer during the election that the authors were on the payroll of the Republican candidate.
Well, I, for one, am disgusted with Lauck (I never read Van Beek's blog). He owed it to his readers to disclose the fact that he was receiving substantial amounts of money from Thune. And, for the record, our blog received nothing; we did it because we believed in John Thune and despised Tom Daschle.
Captain Ed is angry that CBS is using this story to tar all bloggers. That's fine, but how about a little condemnation of Lauck and Van Beek for handing them the brush?
Update: Captain Ed has
more here, including an implicit condemnation of Lauck & Van Beek for not disclosing their remuneration. I withdraw any implied criticism above.
