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How behind the times is our government? Is my party? More than I'd like to admit, but today the left and a whole lot of citizen journalists got pwned.
The web is buzzing with headlines like "Is the House going to limit the free speech of its own members?" "Congressmen, Censorship, and Social Media" and "Politician Using Twitter To Ignite Misleading Partisan Fight Over Politicians Posting To Twitter."
So what the heck is going on you ask?
Congressman John Culberson of Texas has been Twittering. Yes, Twittering.
He talks to his constituents, his fellow countrymen. He talks to ex-pats and heck, he even talks across the aisle.
As Karoli at Bang the Drum writes, "I view this as a huge leap in political communication. No longer constrained by the 'official' responses, these representatives choose to directly speak to anyone who follows them on Twitter, and tell us what’s going on."
As many of us know, each political campaign has been leveraging social media for votes, donations, and to get their messages out. It's been widely noted the Obama campaign is winning the web wars.
"Obama does tend to have a younger demographic that is attracted to him, so it stands to reason that that population would be more active online [than McCain's supporters are]," said Jon Gibs, vice president of media analytics at Nielsen Online. And because of Obama's Web 2.0 approach during the primary season, "this is the first campaign we have seen where the Internet has moved into the middle of the campaign itself," Gibs said.
So when a Republican Congressman blasts a tweet claiming the Democrats are trying to censor him, you bet I perk up:
"I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them."
Of course, I immediately think to myself...but Senator McCain doesn't EVEN USE A COMPUTER! Why would the Democrats want to limit access to social media? They are shooting themselves in the foot!!!
Turns out they are NOT trying to limit anything to anyone, and I just watched several hundred micro-bloggers and bloggers enter quickly into the world of "breaking news" and "fact-checking" as a frenzy over censorship went viral in less than 140 characters.
Then came tweets from the House Floor by the Representative.
"on house floor - telling Ds they must not censor our blogs or Tweets etc "
Culberson's argument stems from a letter from Rep. Michael Capuano of Massachusetts. As Techdirt points out:
Existing House rules actually forbid members of Congress from posting "official communications" on other sites. This was first noticed by a first-term Congressman who was worried that posting videos on YouTube violated this rule. Other Congressional Reps told him to not worry about it as everyone ignored that rule, and no one would get in trouble for using various social media sites such as YouTube. However, that Congressman pushed forward, and eventually got Congress to act. Of course, rather than fixing the real problem (preventing Reps from posting on social media sites), they simply asked YouTube to allow Reps to post videos in a "non-commercial manner." YouTube agreed, and that was that.
However, the existing rules still stood. Culberson's complaint stems for a letter (pdf) sent by Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano, suggesting that the rules actually be changed to be loosened to deal with this situation and make it easier to post content on various social media sites. Culberson, however, bizarrely claims that this is the Democrats trying to limit what he can say on Twitter. But that's actually not at all what the letter states. The problem isn't this letter, but the existing rules that are already in place. In fact, based on the letter, it would appear that this would make it possible for Congressional Reps to Twitter, so long as their bio made it clear they were Reps.
Some small research and suddenly this becomes "politics" not "censorship."
While Culberson's intention may be noble, his framing is not.
The Sunlight Foundation writes, "The really interesting part of the story might be the way Rep. Culberson
managed to stir up attention through twitter.Nothing gets attention through social media like hot stories about social
media. :) "
Framing Rep. Capuano as a big, bad, anti-free speech Congressman, is absurd at best.
This is a Congressman who has repeatedly stood up to China, most recently asking President Bush to Boycott the Olympics Opening Ceremony and
