Declaring My Big, Red "C"

The title for this post refers to my response to Craig Newmark when I interjected myself into a conversation he and Tim O'Reilly were having on Twitter about needing transparency of lobbyists:

@craignewmark Tweeted that same story about lobbyists a half hour ago. Trying to figure out what to do about it. Registered Lobbyist badge?

@craignewmark @timoreilly yup, lobbyist story circulating well, which is good. I like idea that professional communicators should be marked.

Being a "professional communicator" myself, although not a lobbyist, this stream piqued my interest. The tweets that started this concerned a Washington Post story circulating on Facebook and Twitter about PR professionals and other "tech industry lobbyists" using social media to further the interests of the organizations they represent. According to the Post, the issue is that many of these "influence peddlers" are not declaring their affiliations, which results in "enormous influence... with few rules of engagement...."

Among others, the Post story highlights Paul (PJ) Rodriguez, "whose Twitter profile says he's a pop culture maven and cable blogger [who] tweets about "American Idol," Dora the Explorer and wonky tech policy issues, like broadband jurisdiction at the Federal Communications Commission." According to Cecilia Kang, author of the Post article, Rodriguez does not adequately declare on his Twitter profile his connections with those "wonky tech policies" as a PR professional representing NCTA, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable.

The tweet that Kang cites as an example is this one, from April 12, from Rodriguez' "Pop culture maven" Twitter stream.

@pjrodriquez Former FCC Commish Michael Powell: The cable industry has never been regulated in a Title II common carrier fashion" http://bit.ly/b7sbZA

Rodriguez is a fairly prolific tweeter. No tweets since this one nor any in the several days before it were more than ancillarily connected to communications. This Twitter stream does, indeed, appear to be a personally-based stream largely about cultural and pop culture topics. Rodriguez' pjrodriquez pop culture Twitter stream has nearly 500 followers. He also has around 200 followers of his CableTechTalk stream, where he does talk about communications industry topics. It is reasonable that Rodriguez would compartmentalize his interests -- and equally reasonable that they would overlap from time to time.

Kang also cites Jonah Seiger as an example of blurred interests. Sieger is a managing partner in a PR firm that represents Google, Amazon, Facebook, Skype, and other client members of the Open Internet Coalition, an organization that supports net neutrality. In the Post article, Kang states that those connections are not clear, requiring a "casual observer" to "go through a couple more links to determine the organization's funding sources."

While it certainly is possible that the Open Internet Coalition web site has been re-architected since Kang's story was published this morning (or since she interviewed Seiger), I quickly found the list of supporters from a top-level link on their home page, Who We Are.

Key to the debate is a comment in the Post story by Mike McCurry. McCurry himself is not -- if you'll pardon the expression -- neutral. He founded an anti-net-neutrality advocacy group for big communications corporations. McCurry is also a former spokesperson for President Clinton. The reconstituted communications giant AT&T is a direct result of Clinton's 1993 Telecom Act, which allowed the re-merging of various Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) that had previously been split out of (the former, virtually monopolistic) AT&T in 1984. Not surprisingly, considering his backers, McCurry's Arts+Labs group not only is not in favor of net neutrality, but favors stricter anti-piracy enforcement. McCurry makes an astute observation though, as he is quoted by Kang:

"The Internet has become essential, and now people get known more in this world by who they are and how they express themselves."

McCurry is correct, of course. The internet is essential. Further, our interconnectedness provides an outlet in which contextually-relevant content and contextually-eloquent expression make anyone an author or an "expert." News, data, facts, author -- these all have new meanings in a multicultural, multivocal, hyperconnected world. The internet itself is the 800-pound gorilla.

While the warrant of the specific data that Kang used to support her story may be questionable, the argument for some level of transparency in social media -- and throughout the internet -- still holds. This brings us back to the earlier Twitter discussion. When Newmark suggested that "professional communicators should be marked," I asked:

@cherimullins Ah, shall we wear a big, red "C"? RT @craignewmark: @timoreilly I like idea that professional communicators should be marked.

Newmark responds, positing the need for transparency but admiting that he doesn't have an answer.

@craignewmark @cherimullins I dunno, need some kind of transparency operation, maybe need to distinguish socializing from work. not easy. @timoreilly

@craignewmark @cherimullins @jbminn: @timoreilly need transparency without being pain in the butt, I can't think of anything now.

And there is the problem. How do we implement and enforce an adequate level of transparency in a system that is inherently anonymous? Surely it is not necessary for me to declare every one of my associations in order to not mislead my readers. How do we identify the ethos of the author and qualify the integrity of the content in a system that is inherently egalitarian and open? Note the two superstars with whom I was conversing, Craig Newmark (Craig's List) and Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media). Like Craig Newmark, I leave the answers for another day.

Cheri Mullins -- Teacher, gardener, telecommunications writer, dog owner, content strategist, parent, information architect, flower lover, writer, runner, student, provocateur...

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Postscript
Tim O'Reilly also responded to my comment:

@timoreilly @cherimullins Not suggesting all "professional communicators" be badged. Only registered lobbyists - a unique category which needs rules

Yes, it was evident that the proposal was that only a certain subset of communicators needs to be identified. But, that raises another set of questions that I chose to not address here -- yet. Two that come to mind are: Which professions, interests, or activities spur the need for disclosure? and Who makes that decision?