From Kos, found via Steve Gilliard:
Of course, there never were any Dean bloggers paid to act as spokespeople for the campaign. Yet this survey is perpetuating the lie that we were. And on a survey distributed amongst other journalists, no less. Several reporters who got this instantly recognized who the questioned refered to and passed it on to me.
Jerome Armstrong and I asked Ross to correct the question and issue a retraction, and Ross has refused. It’s telling that every single reporter we’ve had to contact to correct the record has done so immediately, and with full apologies. Professor Ross, mister blog ethicists himself, is the first to refuse. That’s the first irony. The second is that it was his college — the Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk, that gave me and Jerome the first mainstream defense in response to the WSJ hit piece. They awarded it the first ever Lipstick on a Pig” award for spectacular hackery.
But really, it’s telling that while most working journalists have been more than willing to correct the record, it’s the campus ethicists that run most afoul of those ethics they claim to uphold.
Update: Oh, and I forgot to mention. Why did Ross call us out? From an email to me:
I had a bunch of examples that seemed anti-business and anti-Republican so I wanted something different.
So the GOP and WSJ efforts to find moral equivalency on the Left to the Armstrong Williams and other such scandals worked. That’s why Jerome and I fought the original WSJ story so hard. Once it’s in print, it’s impossible to kill. It’s like playing whack-a-mole.Fact is, the examples of unethical behavior are all on the Right, and so he threw us into his little survey for “balance”, even if such balance doesn’t come close to existing.
This is the best example I’ve seen so far of how this need for “balance” leads journalists astray. Because it’s somehow become unfair to single out one side, even if this is no more than the simple truth, they make shit up. If Ann Coulter is a rabid nutcase, Michael Moore has to become one to. Bush is a coward? Then clearly we need to mention the allegations against Kerry, true or not.