Can someone explain this whole Kos/Dean story?

[fujiyama]

As far as I know, Kos has been accused of being unethical by someone named Zephyr...because Kos was paid by the Dean campaign. I don't understand how or why this is a problem because Kos always made it clear he supported Dean and apparently there was a disclaimer. How is this wrong? And who is this Zephyr woman? What is her agenda? Is she a dem/repuke? And what is this about a Wall Street Journal article?

Now how does this compare to Armstrong Williams? All I know is that the WH paid Williams to shill for No Child Left Behind.

So can someone explain this? I used to read Kos all the time during the election but I rarely have visited since then.

[marcologico]

1. Here's the WSJ article (from Friday):

Dean Campaign
Made Payments
To Two Bloggers

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY and JAMES BANDLER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 14, 2005; Page B2

Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide.

Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Mr. Dean's campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week in her own Web log, Zonkette. She said "to be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." The hiring of the consultants was noted in several publications at the time.

rest of article:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB110566243803425942,00.html?mod=todays%5Ffree%5Ffeature

[NMDemDist2]

3. link broken

and what nobody is saying about the Dems is that WE DIDN'T USE TAXPAYER MONEY!!

don't let the rightwingnuts confuse the Armstrong Williams issue.

Ed Schulz took money for a business enterprise (syndicating his radio show)

Kos took money and it was reported in several publications when it happened and Kos was always a very upfront Dean supporter


BIG difference folks.....

[marcologico]

4. thanks, I fixed the link n/t

[ananda]

2. O'Really and Novak

I think it's been FuxSux News and Robert Novak.. and maybe Rush Limbaughtomy.. who have been makin all the stink about Kos and Dean.... the reason being that they want to deflect and diffuse criticism of Bush and his payment to Armstrong Williams by showing that the Dems did it too.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see the comparison.

Kos is clearly a Democratic Party website and blog, not a news or media outlet.

What Bush and Armstrong did was clearly unethical and done for propaganda purposes.

What Dean did in paying Kos and Zephyr was part of his campaign.

BIG difference, imnsho.

Sue

[TacticalPeek]

5. Much and mighty analyses at Atrios' blog:

http://atrios.blogspot.com