"Former council member Sandy Carmany was the only one who blogged regularly and was heavily criticized for it before losing an election, [Sue] Polinsky said."She was? I followed Sandy Carmany's blogging very closely. I do not remember her being criticized, much less "heavily," for blogging. I question whether that is true
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Carmany criticized for blogging?
From a Joe Killian article:
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"Criticized" may have been a bad choice of words as it suggests a public flogging.
ReplyDeleteI was paraphrasing what Sue said, which was basically that there were a number of people (and plenty of them on the council) who thought she shouldn't be doing it and some of the things she said on her blog were later used against her.
At the time I remember talking to pols who basically said they didn't blog because once you put your thoughts out there like that, they're out there forever. She was certainly attacked on blogs for things she said on her own blog and to her credit participated in long, sometimes confrontational comment-threads about a number of issues on her blog and others'.
The council members who didn't blog didn't get the advantages she got from it, but also didn't have their words parsed, criticized and sometimes twisted in the same way and avoided confrontational comment threads by...well, avoiding them.
This is a good example of what I think Sue was talking about and what I was getting at in the paraphrasing:
ReplyDeletehttp://sandycarmany.blogspot.com/2006/04/developments-in-gpd-investigation.html
In that thread - and in others - Carmany tries, as you and Hoggard say in the thread, to have a dialogue with people and ends up being criticized for not having an unending point-for-point debate with people, answering every question immediately and not being MORE transparent, when she's being the most transparent person on the council and the only one having this kind of dialogue.
I know how she feels. I used to blog about my job more myself before it became clear that it made me a target for trolls and people criticizing me for not having endless hostile debates with them when I tried to interact with readers in a different way. I've only recently gotten back to blogging in any serious way because it just got exhausting being attacked for it.
It's a very delicate balancing act.
Joe's right; he paraphrased what I said but the point is accurate. Sandy's blog posts were picked apart and repeated (with some info out of context) by locals and by opposing candidates. In spite of our saying we want pols to blog, what we do is antithetical to their sharing information that isn't written by a press agent.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't remember her being criticized, I suggest you take some of those OTC memory pills.
How do you take "if you only knew what we knew" out of context?
ReplyDeleteThere is a world of difference between being criticized for things one says on a blog and being criticized for blogging.
ReplyDeleteJoe's remembrances and Sue's rewriting of "criticized for blogging" to simply "criticized" not withstanding, we still have no examples of Sandy being criticized for blogging. Was Sandy criticized? Yes. Criticized on her blog? Yes. Criticized for blogging? Show me.
It would probably have been more accurate to write "criticized as a result of her blogging."
ReplyDeleteAlthough I did hear politicians and political consultants criticize her directly for blogging these are exactly the kinds of people who'd never do it on a blog or anywhere where they could be called to account for it later.
It seems to me Carmany tried to have an online dialogue with citizens about any number of things when other council members didn't bother. As a direct result of her entering into the dialogue others shied away from she got jumped all over, her words parsed and any number of things were written about her that wouldn't have been had she done the politically savvy thing and refrained from having that dialogue, the way many other council members did.
Now Roch is certainly right that the medium didn't directly cause that. If she'd decided to answer questions or have a dialogue with citizens through a newspaper column or in some other public forum that stays around and at which there could continue to be discussion, much the same thing might have happened.
But a number of other council members said some of the same sort of things publicly and privately to citizens and even reporters. They escaped the criticism because they could either pretend they hadn't said it, pretend they hadn't said that EXACTLY or they simply said it in a way (newspaper article, for instance) that didn't encourage vigorous back-and-forth and quizzing.
This is why political consultants advise their clients against blogging - and I think that's what Sue was probably getting at and also what I was trying to express.
The medium doesn't cause people to say certain things -- but I think because of the immediacy of this particular medium it can get very messy for politicians very quickly.
But it also allows people to do what I'm doing now. They can say: "You know what? You've got a point. I probably should have written/said/done it this way. Good point. Will try to do better in the future."
I don't think there's a lot of shame in that. But then, I don't have to run for office.
That certainly adds some clarity, Joe. Thanks.
ReplyDelete