SolidPolitics.com is questioning whether Hillary Clinton is buying favorable publicity at Daily Kos. During the 2004 campaign Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos came under criticism for taking a “consulting job” with the Dean campaign and reportedly was paid well above the customary amounts for such technical consulting. Subsequently his site became a major factor in promoting Howard Dean in the blogosphere. During the campaign I frequently criticized Kos for misquoting Kerry and for distorting his positions, but it is impossible to know for sure if this was intentional due to financial incentives or simple ignorance. Zephyr Teachout, head of internet outreach for the Dean campaign, later did admit that the Dean campaign’s goal was to obtain Kos’s support in the blogosphere.
SolidPolitics.com repeats the old questions about Kos during the 2004 campaign and also notes that Hillary Clinton is paying $4900 a week for ads at Daily Kos. Checking the rates at the Liberal Blog Network verifies that the second position ads, which Clinton is currently running, cost $4900. The premium position ads, with none currently sold, run $9000 and standard ads cost $2900 per week. The only ads in the Liberal Blog Network which are more expensive are on the premium sidebar at Talking Points Memo, running $10,000 per week.
There is not necessarily anything wrong with the Clinton campaign paying Kos $4900 per week. Unlike the situation where he was paid an inflated amount with the hopes of obtaining his support by the Dean campaign, this is Kos’s usual ad rate. While expensive, it is justified as the site has over 4 million ad impressions per week, by far the highest in the ad network. You certainly cannot blame Kos for taking the ad money. Similarly, it could make sense for Clinton to purchase such ads in the hopes of improving her relatively poor standing among liberal blog readers. For example, her current ad features a call for Gonzales to resign which might improve her reputation among liberal blog readers who click through and come to her site.
The question is whether the ad buy is affecting her coverage. SolidPolitics.com charges that Kos’s attitude towards Clinton has improved since the ads were purchased and compares his posts on her from before and after the announcement. We cannot exclude the possibility that this is affecting his decisions, however it is not the only possible explanation. Peter Daou has been very aggressive in contacting bloggers and trying to improve our impression of Clinton and perhaps either his influence or Clinton’s campaigning have made a favorable impression. It is also possible that seeing the Republican prospects has caused bloggers with close ties to the Democratic Party to take a less critical view of the Democratic front runner, realizing that a year from now they might be backing Clinton regardless of their feelings.
While it might be true that Kos’s posts on Clinton have been kinder than before the ad buys, it should also be noted that Hillary Clinton is hardly the favorite over at Daily Kos. John Edwards has dominated the straw polls and there is also considerable support for Al Gore should he enter the race. There is even a Draft Gore ad up, although at the lower standard ad rate. Still, we must keep in mind the financial motivations at stake when reading the opinions at blogs which command ad prices at this level knowing that the ads might be influencing the coverage of the nomination battle.
Update (September 15, 2007): This post has received several recent links, including a diary at Daily Kos from people who do not believe that Kos has treated their candidate fairly. At present there are no ads from the Clinton campaign, and (while I haven’t been monitoring this) I do not believe Clinton has been a heavy advertiser at Daily Kos for quite a while. While I sympathize with those who have found some of Kos’s posts to be unfair, the argument that it is based upon financial factors is even weaker now than it was when this post was originally written.
Update II: Considering how hot a topic this has become I have added a follow up post on the front page.
