Obama’s Bittergate, Mayhill Fowler, and Citizen Journalism

Do citizens have a right to attend, observe, and write about political events and appearances?  Of course they do.  Does that change when a citizen is contributing to a “pro-am” political website like OffTheBus and an open supporter of a candidate?  Pundits, journalists, bloggers, and just plain old citizens have been arguing about that since Mayhill Fowler’s already infamous blog post, “Obama:  No Surprise that Hard-pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter,” since it was published on OffTheBus on April 11th.  PressThink’s Jay Rosen has an indepth analysis of the fallout:

When Arianna Huffington and I conceived of OffTheBus in March of 2007, we talked about this possibility: A contributor of ours gets invited to a fundraiser and tells us what the candidate said there. We knew it was likely because we would be opening OffTheBus to people who were active in politics. We decided that if we trusted the writer, we would probably run the piece, after doing what was necessary to verify the words of the candidate. If the campaigns wanted to ban from every gathering of supporters those supporters who had a blog, or a diary at a site like Daily Kos or TPM Cafe, or an affiliation with a project like ours — well, that didn’t seem very practical to us.

We knew there could be problems with this approach, and possible disputes with the campaigns. But we also felt that participants in political life had a right to report on what they saw and heard themselves, not as journalists claiming no attachments but as citizens with attachments who were relinquishing none of their rights. We talked about it, but we never anticipated anything this big, or wave-like.

According to Marc Cooper, editorial director of OffTheBus, Mayhill Fowler’s post on Friday afternoon drew 250,000 page views and over 5,000 comments in 48 hours. The story she told was picked up by Reuters and AP and the national newspapers. It was the top story on Google News for a day, and on Memeorandum for a day and a half. Drudge ran with the Politico’s version. Right and left blogosphere reacted with force. (Definitely see Cooper’s post, Inside the Obama Guns God Bitterness Storm.)

Before she was airbrushed out by Tim Russert and changed into a leaker by Jay-Newton Small, Mayhill was an Obama supporter who sometimes found it necessary to be a critic of the campaign. (And she remains for Obama.) She is also a citizen journalist with a platform: OffTheBus, which resides at the Huffington Post. Now if the term “citizen journalist” drives you nuts, or vaults you onto your high horse, just call her a writer with a page on the web that can reach the rest of the news system.

The point is Mayhill Fowler is a particular kind of Obama loyalist. The kind with a notebook, a tape recorder, some friends in the campaign, a public platform of decent size, plus the faculty of critical intelligence.

A political supporter with critical intelligence who is willing to go on the record criticizing the candidate she supports?  That’s impossible in these days of media “objectivity.” Fowler’s true account of an on the record event has been delegitimized because of her status as a blogger/citizen journalist (who did disclose her support by the way).  Click here to read the rest of Rosen’s analysis.

Of course the worst thing about all of this is that Americans have been subjected to a week of “reporting” on whether or some Americans are bitter (duh, some are and some aren’t), and whether or not Obama is an elitist (perhaps).  That’s a week wasted as far as I’m concerned.

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