The Online Rumor Mill

My favorite political blogger, Ben Smith of Politico, writes of his own mini online crisis today on his blog. Ben covers the Democratic side of the 2008 presidential election. Someone who apparently thinks Ben favors Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama posted the false claim that he appeared on CNN Thursday night, billed as a "Hillary Supporter," and endorsed her. As is the speed of rumors online, the post sparked an immediate firestorm and angry readers called for a different reporter of Politico's Democratic Party coverage and some even called for his resignation, all without anyone actually seeing his supposed appearance on CNN. This is an unfortunate reality of rapidly spreading online rumors - people don't do their homework.

The truth is that Ben didn't appear on CNN and the person who posted the claim can't produce a shred of evidence that he was. Using some logical principles of crisis management, Ben rightly posted a measured response on his blog to diffuse the situation and has refuted claims of bias. This is an unfortunate example of how easily a simple post on a forum by one person can turn into an unnecessary headache.

For what it's worth, I haven't seen any overt bias in Ben's coverage of the candidates (and I am a steadfast Obama supporter). I am glued to his blog during the day because he has great sources and is often first with a lot of information. Sure, he posts negative things about Obama - especially when he had such a bad media week last week - but he also posts negative things about Hillary. For some reason, his posts about attacks from the Clinton camp are often picked up by the Drudge Report, but just because Drudge links to him sometimes doesn't make him pro-Hillary.