Sell Out! When Blogs Sacrifice Credibility for Content, It Hurts Everyone

Today’s hilarious blog ‘reporting’ of Fairfax Board of Supervisors race reminded me instantly of a hit song from the 90s:

Both Virginia Virtucon and The Bull Elephant regurgitated a fundraising email for a Fairfax BoS candidate on their blogs today, skipping paid content entirely and going straight to sell out shills.

The problem with this type of false ‘content’ is that it damages the reputations of Virginia political blogs (and especially conservative blogs) across the board. I can’t recall a single time that Bearing Drift has put up fundraising emails as posts or content. It certainly doesn’t bode well for VV or TBE, both of whom BD has relations with, that they’re willing to throw content integrity out the window for whatever candidate strikes their fancy in any given election.

While every one of us has personal preferences for candidates, issues, nomination methods, etc, monitoring and striving to keep those biases as neutral as possible, or at least disclose it, it is a critical part of blogging. As traditional media continues to decline, blogging and social media have taken on a larger role in politics, especially in Virginia. VV and TBE have both played a part in that new world. However, with shameless (and shameful) posts that solicit money for their preferred candidates, they sully their own reputations and that of blogging in general.

It’s one thing to post against/for a particular candidate. It’s even become permissible to post paid content, though can certainly blur the lines between ethics and journalism. This also gives me an excuse to link to John Oliver, which I’ll always take!

It is another level entirely to skip content, to skip paid/native advertising and jump to unpaid shill. That sullies all of us, and frankly the powers that be at TBE know better than this. One contributor with an axe to grind, or a bumper to grind, shouldn’t reflect on the entirety of their performance. Unfortunately, that’s the way the world works, and we all get painted with the same brush.

You can continue to count on legitimate content at Bearing Drift, rather than demands for your money disguised as posts. I hope that would be a common sense standard for other political blogs as well.

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