Dave: Is there a conflict of interest between the presidential candidate and the media? Yes. Is there visibility? No. How do you draw the line?
Dan: Not a single line. It’s like with any institution. I work for them… For blogging, transparency is more about exposing how I do the blog than exposing the institution. You want me to tell all, but you don’t do that for Harvard, do you?
Dave: The issue that raised this was the Mercury News pulling down Dan’s archive.
Question: What about John Robb?
Dave: I can’t comment on that, I have shareholder responsibility, and there are laws that protect the employee’s rights in California. And that’s all I can say right now. There are lots of things we can’t talk about. But there’s an industry that controls the flow of news, and we don’t see them.
Doc: I think there’s more transparency than there have been. Maybe the boiler rooms aren’t exposed but there are more people on the inside that are blogging so you see what’s going on.
Dave: But is there a conflict with presidential campaigns and the media?
… Dan: I think the media don’t do a good job of covering the media. But I don’t think Jayson Blair would be uncovered by a four page spread in the New York Times, but rather in the Washington Post and everything else.
Dave: xxx, can you comment?
xxx: I think the area of opaque media is coming to an end. The Times used the word transparency and even more incredibly accountability ….