ALTHOUGH CBS SEEMS SCARED TO RILE THE WHITE HOUSE after the Killian memos fiasco and has subsequently decided to delay a much more important story on the potential perpetrators of the Niger uranium documents, they did use the RNC anti-gay mailer posted by The Washington Note as their 3rd story on CBS News Friday night.
Hundreds of sites have linked to my post of the RNC mailer — but some skeptics wondered whether the Democrats actually produced these fliers to make the Republicans look bad. I have the inside of the flier and the voter registration information for any who would like them. I’m trying to post them but am having difficulty getting the files to load. Send an email to steve@thewashingtonnote.com, and I’ll just email any interested parties the other parts of the RNC mailer.
After my post, which other bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, John Aravosis, Matthew Yglesias, and many others posted, CBS News ran a story, followed by a front page story by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Now the RNC mailer issue in Arkansas (as well as West Virginia, which was first noted by the Associated Press) is being reported throughout the major media and blog world.
After all the clamor, the RNC finally admitted that it had indeed sent the mailer.
I have been deluged by calls and emails since I posted this RNC mailer — thanks to a loyal reader of The Washington Note who sent it to me. And I was hoping to keep this issue going — but the classic media world took hold of it pretty quickly, which I had hoped it would do.
I don’t hold any grudges against CBS News or the Arkansas Democrat Gazette for using the images I posted without attribution — which they both did — but I do want to highlight that these two outlets and many of the other news outlets that covered this homophobic electionerring strategy in Arkansas got into this because of the readers and writers of blogs.
In Chicago at an American Political Science Association forum on the “Power and Politics of Blogs” organized by Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner, the discussant — Cass Sunstein — asked whether there was empirical evidence on whether blogs influenced the major media. I think that there are many cases recently, including the flurry over the authenticity questions of the Killian memos.
But highlighting on blogs this disgusting RNC anti-gay, ban-the-bible mailer has clearly had an impact on major media reporting.
— Steve Clemons
