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This weblog does not belong to the Media Bloggers Association. This weblog had never heard of the Media Bloggers Association until yesterday, when the Associated Press made an announcement:
AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelinesOh yeah?The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.
Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it. …
Cox, the head of the bloggers’ association, said there needed to be a clearer understanding among bloggers about what kinds of use of AP stories would or would not trigger legal complaints.
This weblog was not born yesterday.
I’ve been monitoring reactions to the AP story. I haven’t seen a single weblog indicate that it had heard of the Media Bloggers Association before this story broke. Naturally, I was suspicious. It sounded like one of those setups where “tribal representatives” who have no actual standing with the tribe sign a treaty ceding some large tract of land to white developers. What the hell is the Media Bloggers Association?
I went looking. Let me just say that the research has been distractingly interesting. I can’t possibly work everything into this post. Shortest possible version: Daily Kos is right in all particulars about this supposed negotiation. His major points: [1.] The Associated Press doesn’t make the law. Their current campaign is in violation of established copyright law. Talking to the MBA won’t change that. [2.] Kos isn’t going to boycott the AP. He intends to go on using his right to fair-use quotations from news stories. He says if the AP wants to sue him for this, bring it on. [3.] And I quote:
The dumbasses at the Media Bloggers Association, of course, are walking right into that meeting because they crave nothing more than creating the impression that they, you know, represent bloggers (they don’t).Spot on.
The Media Bloggers Association substantially consists of one lackluster blogger named Robert Cox. His weblog, Words in Edgewise, and the MBA website, are two halves of the same site. Robert Cox isn’t all that interested in blogging per se. What he’s really into is self-aggrandizement by representing himself as someone who speaks for bloggers and blogging. An embarrassing number of organizations have fallen for this.
(There’s more yummy goodness to come, but I’m going to post this much now. Expect this entry to get longer as I continue to work on it.)
2. Robert Cox is speaking for you!
Meeting with the Associated Press on behalf of the blogosphere is right up Robert Cox’s alley. His appearances at conferences and on roundtable discussions, his interviews and his published opinions, are the by far the biggest subject of his weblog.
An incomplete list: RC is on the Poynter committee, which is “evolving a guidebook for online ethics” (but I haven’t seen Cox participating in any of the major online ethics thrashes over the past few years). :: RC appears on a panel on the Future of Alternative Journalism. :: RC attends the We Media conference on blogging and social media. :: RC participates in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s roundtable on the future of online media. :: RC attends a Justice in Journalism conference in Nashville. :: (He quotes some of his own remarks, which are fatuous.) :: RC is interviewed about blogging by the Congressional Quarterly Researcher. :: RC participates in a State of the News Media 2006 online roundtable. :: RC puts together a panel on the Maine Blogger case for the Media Giraffe Summit. :: RC speaks at the SPJ annual conference. :: Legislators and advocacy groups ask RC to opine on blogging. :: RC writes op ed for DFW Star-Telegram. :: RC appears on the Fox News Neil Cavuto Show. :: (That piece will give you a good sense of Robert Cox’s blogging style, if you’re interested; or try RC meets Gerald Ford for a picosecond during a seventh-grade class trip.) :: RC appears on a panel on changing media at the Justice & Journalism conference in Phoenix. :: RC engages in name-dropping at BloggerCon IV. :: RC is mentioned in an editorial by Matt Tapscott. :: Lauren Gelman of the Stanford Law School Clinical Education Center asks RC to sign on to an Amicus brief. :: RC travels this great land of ours, meeting “…educational institutions, foundations, media associations, financial services companies, law firms and legal associations, government agencies, book publishers, movie companies and many more. I have met with executive editors for major newspapers, supreme court justices, White House officials, deans of law schools, general counsels for major corporations. I have spoken at conferences for corporations, public information officers, major media associations, journalism schools. I have also personally met with hundreds of bloggers.”
Please tell me you get the idea.
Given the quality of Robert Cox’s opinions and analyses, you’d think we’d have heard more about all this activity of his. I expect the liberal mainstream media is to blame. (Yup, Cox is one of those. He’s also a racist.)
Sometimes, alas, Robert Cox is denied a voice at some event where he’d like to speak, like this one, at the Museum of Television & Radio. Then he’s hard put to say a single good thing about the gathering. (Click through and have a look at who they invited instead.) But for real vituperative anger—the only circumstance that ever gets Robert Cox to write at substantial length and use specific detail—the winner and champeen is a 2005 panel discussion following a special showing of George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck that left RC permanently ticked-off at Nick Lemann. You can read about it in RC’s Blogs to Lemann: Drop Dead!.
In that entry, he also mentions that he wrote up the event at the time in his old weblog, The National Debate. TND has since been taken down, but through the miracle of the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. the Internet Archive, you can still read it.* Even better, you can watch RC’s own video of himself asking the panel the kind of question that makes panel moderators wish they carried firearms, and the panelists doing what RC claims they “studiously avoided” doing: answering his question. Watch this video! THERE IS NO BETTER INTRODUCTION TO THE MIND OF ROBERT COX.
3. Some smaller tidbits before I dive into the next big section:
Robert Cox (then Bob Cox) was or is the proprietor of Olbermann Watch, a nutbar right-wing attack site. I don’t want to link to it. You can read about the blog, Robert Cox, the early days of the MBA, and the kind of things RC does with his prized “journalistic credentials”, in Watching Olbermann Watch. This ties Cox to the likes of Rupert Murdoch. It’s definitely food for paranoia.
Onward.
Robert Cox isn’t accustomed to having other sites respond to his writing. When they do, he gets nettled, whiny and defensive, at length. Worse, he fails to identify who it is he’s responding to! It’s enough to make you wonder whether, at heart, he’s really a blogger at all. Here’s his reaction to this entry (plus someone else’s response). Even more fun, here he is picking a fight with Gawker Media.
You just keep thinkin’, Butch.
That’s all for this segment. Again, expect this entry to get longer as I continue working on it.
…
4. A bad Wikipedia entry, an interesting item from a Salon letter column, and an unseemly obsession with being first; also, Tlönista reads the MBA News Archive so you don’t have to:
A bad Wikipedia entry:
I first divined the existence of Robert Cox by looking at the Wikipedia entry on the Media Bloggers Association. It’s short:
The Media Bloggers Association, or MBA, is an American membership-based, non-partisan organization involved in activities that support the development of blogs as an emerging distinct form of media.What’s the problem? Simple. There’s one humongous and glaring omission: Firedoglake owned that story. Their coverage was the wonder of the world. The mainstream media and bloggers across the entire political spectrum were using Firedoglake’s coverage to follow the story. It got written up at length by Glenn Greenwald in Salon (“Firedoglake’s Libby reporting forces a reevaluation of blogs”), Liz Halloran in U.S. News and World Report (Media Takes: A Dogged Blogger at the Libby Trial), and Jay Rosen in PressThink (“They’re Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial”). If you look at SourceWatch’s list of external links on the trial of Scooter Libby, you can see how thoroughly they dominated the coverage.In January 2007, MBA members were among the first bloggers to receive press credentials identical to those of broadcast and print journalists at a federal court, to cover the trial of Lewis Libby, alongside bloggers from more established sites including the Huffington Post and Daily Kos. The MBA described this as a significant step forward in its efforts on behalf of its members.
I typed “media blogging association” firedoglake into Google. Up popped result #1: the New York Times article on Firedoglake’s coverage of the Libby trial. Two and a half screens down, there it was:
For blogs, the Libby trial marks a courthouse coming of age. It is the first federal case for which independent bloggers have been given official credentials along with reporters from the traditional news media, said Robert A. Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association.“I see you,” I said out loud. I went back to the Wikipedia article and looked at the entry’s revision history. Sure enough, the original version and the first two rounds of revisions were credited to “Robertissimo.” (Yes, I know: there’s always the possibility that it was written and revised by some other Robertissimo of the same name—one who uses the standard MBA wording, is familiar with the organization’s doings, cares enough to keep a close watch on the entry, cares far too much about who gets credit for being the first bloggers to get journalistic credentials, and has a writing style very like that of Robert Cox. It’s well to keep such improbabilities in mind.)
The next revision was by Raph Levien, whose laconic explanation said “tone down self-promotion, giving due credit to other blogs.” Levien amended Robertissimo’s untruthful claim that MBA members had been the first bloggers to receive press credentials identical those of print journalists, and added mentions of Daily Kos and The Huffington Post: if not completely accurate, a considerable improvement. Another Wikipedian, Outsider3, disputed some of the entry’s other claims. Then, alas, Robertissimo came back and removed Outsider3’s additions, piously noting in the “Talk” section that “…while the information may be factual, it needs reliable sources per WP guidelines on attribution.” I’d have thought that “There’s a good chance that I’m the president of the organization being criticized” was the more pertinent information.
Further down in the “Talk” section, I think it’s Robertissimo who quotes Robert Cox explaining that the reason the MBA members weren’t the first-ever bloggers to get journalistic credentials was because an earlier blogger, Gene Borio, had claimed that he received federal credentials long before the Libby trial. If so, Robertissimo did a good job of maintaining his initial enormous lie: that Firedoglake had no part in the coverage of the Libby trial.
(Dear Wikipedia: may I suggest that you have a look at Robertissimo’s other entries and edits? Dishonesty is so seldom a one-time event. Also, someone should fix that entry.)
An interesting item from a Salon letter column:
This letter to the editor is from the letter column following Glenn Greenwald’s article on Firedoglake’s coverage of the Libby trial. The letter writer is referring to the New York Times’ story about the coverage:
You Left Out the Unfortunate Part of That Article…(I added the underline.)… the shameless credit-grabbing by Robert A. Cox, president of “the America Bloggers Association.”
For blogs, the Libby trial marks a courthouse coming of age. It is the first federal case for which independent bloggers have been given official credentials along with reporters from the traditional news media, said Robert A. Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association. Mr. Cox negotiated access for the bloggers.Mr. Cox had absolutely no role in negotiation access for Firedoglake, which did so independently long ago, most likely before Mr. Cox even thought about it. Cox has also tried to force FDL into his “pool” deal with AP, which, I believe, FDL rebuffed. And yet Cox not only continues to act like this was all his doing, the Times dutifully goes along.FDL’s coverage was FDL’s alone, and in no way, shape, or form, associated with whatever con game Cox is pushing.
— dave
This version of events was confirmed by Christy Hardin Smith in Firedoglake:
One correction, though: the MBA did NOT negotiate our media passes. We have been working on getting passes for this trial from the moment Libby was indicted. Jane and I made calls to the courthouse, e-mailed, wrote letters, and worked on getting credentialed from very early on. To emphasize our commitment to doing serious coverage, we enlisted the help of Arianna, whose Huffington Post name was more recognizable than FDL to folks not familiar with how blogs had been covering this investigation. But the gaining of our three media passes? That was OUR work. And it was our consistent work on this case—for years—that got us the passes, and not anyone from the outside. I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with some other blog group because, frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time this morning, but I wanted to be clear on that point—we worked our butts off to get credentialed for this case, and we were credentialed early. Mr. Shane may have misunderstood on that point, so I wanted to make that perfectly clear.To summarize thus far: Robert Cox shoehorned himself into the story, fibbed about being the intermediator through whose agency all the bloggers got their credentials, already had a deal going with AP, and tried to force the Firedoglake bloggers to join the AP pool, which would have given AP complete access to their superior and quite valuable reportage.
Now we’re supposed to believe he’s dickering in good faith with the AP on behalf of blogdom? No way. Even if his motives were purer than Ivory soap, he should have more sense than to go anywhere near this issue.
An unseemly obsession with being first:
Let’s go back once more to that New York Times article. At the bottom of the story, it has two corrections. The first one says:
A front-page article yesterday about bloggers covering the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. referred imprecisely to the role of Robert A. Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, in securing credentials. Mr. Cox negotiated access for his association, which was the first blogger group to be granted credentials to cover the trial. He did not negotiate on behalf of firedoglake.com and other blogs that received their credentials later.This has to have originated with Robert Cox and the MBA. It’s not very believable. Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith had been hot on the trail of the Valerie Plame/Dick Cheney/Scooter Libby story for years, and applied for credentials as soon as Libby was indicted. Robert Cox didn’t take a strong early interest in the story. He primarily covers stories that involve blogging, and he usually writes about them after they’ve happened. During the trial itself, his coverage was diffuse, imitative, and not terribly well-informed. He was enthusiastic about having credentials—RC really, really likes credentials—but evidenced no great passion for the story itself.
In short, I’d need solid and convincing proof from a reliable third party before I could believe Robert Cox & Co. got their credentials before the Firedoglake bloggers. Why should it matter whether they did? No reason. In fact, it’s not especially important. What’s weird is that Robert Cox thinks it’s that important. This is not something a grownup should be obsessing about.
Tlönista reads the MBA News Archive so you don’t have to:
In the comment thread of this post, the estimable Tlönista has posted a summary of the MBA News Archive, and all the important work it does on behalf of bloggers. Conclusion: it doesn’t do much work on behalf of bloggers. To quote:
In summary, it looks like the MBA is a vehicle for getting Robert Cox quoted in papers. And they’ve been awfully cozy with the AP for a long while (well, two years is a long while in Internet time).We could still use a patient volunter to watch and report on the Youtube video about MBA’s deal with the AP.
And that’s it for this segment. It’s been a long day.
Still to come, possibly tomorrow: the Newsweek connection, Oliver Willis held blameless, the MBA’s hastily rejiggered membership page, the quest for a membership list, the case of the Maine Blogger, further revelations of the Wayback Machine, and Walt Willis and Bob Shaw.
I seem to recall the 'Media Bloggers Association' from 2006, when it was being used to screen the 'undesirables' (read: liberal blogs) during election coverage. Clearly it hasn't made inroads abong bloggers since then.
This is an old ploy. It's the old 'house union' given new form. The big boys create the 'token opposition' negotiate with them to create the form of negotiation, tell the 'opposition' what to say, announce a 'deal'. And the naïve may be taken in.
Still to come: The Adoration of the Credentials, a bad Wikipedia entry, an interesting tidbit in a Salon letter column, writing Firedoglake out and Robert Cox in, the Newsweek connection, Oliver Willis held blameless, the MBA's hastily rejiggered Membership page, the quest for a membership list, the case of the Maine Blogger, revelations of the Wayback Machine, and Walt Willis and Bob Shaw.
P J Evans, you do indeed remember that.
Fragano, I think the Associated Press knows that that's what's going on, but I'm not sure Robert Cox knows it.
I once elevated myself to Cardinal of the Washington Archdiocese of the Church of Secular Humanism.
But nobody noticed.
I'm backing the Great Orange Satan on this one.
It looks like Robert Cox is getting snippy about people questioning his group's authority.
First time tragedy, second time farce?
For more information about his blog, you should CALL HIM. Because that's how bloggers trade information - via long-distance telephone call.
I first heard of the MBA during the Libby trial, when they pulled the same ploy of claiming they represent "the bloggers" and tried to be the gatekeepers for who got press credentials. Fortunately, the judge didn't buy it, and more fortunately, the judge did accept the idea that bloggers were worthy of press credentials. The MBA got one set of credentials, which they shared between a set of bloggers who produced nothing particularly noteworthy, Firedoglake got their own, and produced groundbreaking liveblogging and other coverage that even the mainstream media used as a go-to reference. And we all lived happily ever after. (Well, we're still working on that.)
(Full disclosure: I've been part of the Firedoglake community from near the beginning, so my view of the MBA may be a little biased. But not much. ;-)
Hey, how do you find AP stories on Google, anyway? AP doesn't appear on their front page -- just reputable newswires.
I like how the MBA site's "Membership" link tells you that sure, we've got members, but we're currently not taking any new ones (haven't, in fact, for nearly a year now) while trying to automate the approval process.
What a load of tripe; there are thousands of blogs that you can subscribe to electronically, and this guy's saying it's taking him a YEAR to figure out how to do it?
For that matter, where's the list of members? Could it be the list is so pitifully small that he's embarrassed to show it? Zero is a pitifully small number too...
John L@12 Zero is a pitifully small number too
No, no. I'm sure there's at least one name on the membership list.
Possibly even two... :-)
Michael #11,
When I use Google, I see the AP heading that you can use under the title of the various news articles.
As my wife has pointed out, AP articles tend to get carried by newspapers all over the nation; if someone linked and quoted excerpts from one of those, does that mean AP could demand the payment or cease and desist for them too?
How long before my favorite cover band, Robert Cox and His Invisible Lawyers, takes the Making Light stage?
Can I be a member of the Media Bloggers' Association?
Do I need to put a banner on my blog or something?
I need to feel important. It's really all I have. I want to make policy for everyone in spite of all those pesky established laws and stuff. Mostly, though...
I just want the AP to love me.
The Media Bloggers Association is aware of all internet traditions.
Jason@7: I especially like this bit on the "Self-Appointed" page: So let me be clear. The MBA is not a "self-appointed" group seeking to "represent" the blogosphere.
Okay, fine, so you (Robert Cox) won't mind standing down then? You'll tell the AP that a lot of bloggers would actually be pissed about the idea of you speaking for them?
CB@9: Haha...yes. Exactly.
Ya know it seems that the AP is trying to make money to save themselves.
But they are still idiots...and have been for a long time.
Michael, #14: One is the loneliest number...
I had a peek on LinkedIn and found his profile. The "Media Bloggers Association" group shows that it has 171 members (linkedin members, that is, not Association members) but I can't see them without joining the group.
It seems that maybe the MBA helps bloggers defend their rights the way SFWA helps SF writers defend theirs: helping out the people who have asked them, to the detriment of everyone who hasn't.
Astroturfers and their associates....
Cry "Cheeble" and let loose....
==================
Hmm. A website claiming Authority, which seems to have nothing of any sort regarding material citing achievements and background of key personnel, no history/information about the inception and antecedents and whys and wherefores of the organization, no information about officers.... compare that to e.g. Making Light which on the front page includes,
"Making Light: a weblog by Teresa & Patrick Nielsen Hayden and their many commenters and sometime guests. Because “a better future isn't going to happen by itself.” (Thank you, Kevin Maroney.) More below." with link to who Teresa & Patrick Nielsen Hayden are, and some why/wherefore about Making Light.
Hmm, perhaps I should contemplate starting a site rating service, with such things as ratings for providing information about who is behind the site and why, how comprehensible such information is, how up to date the site is, if the links are working or not and how comprehensive and userfule they are compared to how comprehensive and useful the site says it is.... (That is, a site which says, "here are a few of my favorite links" that has a four or five links, the hype and the reality match assuming that the person actually likes the sites linked go (that involves an assumption which I accept as true unless demonstrated otherwise). A site which claims to list all SF publishers which include paranormal romance epublishers but not Baen, Tor, DAW, Ace, Eos, etc., gets a zero... a site which links to the epublishers and says it's linking to paranormal epublishers, however, is being accurate if/when it links to them). Etc.)
You know, I don't think I've ever mentioned here that I'm the Pope. I have a card and everything. But since titles, organization, and credentials are clearly Very Important in the Modern World, I feel I should let you know.
Clifton, I happen to be Prime Minister of the Internet. I just don't like to brag in public. But since you're the Pope, I feel as though I can confide in you.
Eric Scharf's #18 made me laugh so hard I spit out my tea. Then again, I knew the inadvertent originator of that meme back when he was a left-of-center blowhard.
I note that Mr. Cox responded to a blog comment on another site. In doing so, he quoted a commenter. His quote contained 16 (!!) words. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I will also be fascinated to hear details about the "hundreds of cases" he alleges to have assisted in. No, actually, he said "we." Royal? Inclusive? Imagined?
Cox also doesn't seem to quite understand the issues:
I pointed out to AP that the crux of the problem is that AP has never articulated what exactly it wants from bloggers.No, the crux of the problem is that the AP is claiming legal rights that it does not actually possess under the law.
He isn't really self-appointed. One other blogger asked him for help. (Or maybe even three other bloggers.)
Anybody who claims there's any possible way to represent the blogosphere is either just plain nuts or dishonest.
The more I poke around the less I think they're a sham, actually--"Media Bloggers Association" appears to means "association of people who write blogs on behalf of traditional media companies." So they're in bed with the AP and its membership up to their duodenae, but in a genuine way. Here's their website (as opposed to their blog): http://www.mediabloggers.org/.
For example, check out this bit from Newsweek's in-house political blog.
Newsweek and the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) have launched "The Ruckus," a new group blog about politics for Newsweek.com. The blog will feature posts from nine MBA-member bloggers about the presidential campaign on a single page, giving Newsweek.com readers a convenient sampling of some of the best political blogging from across the country and from key primary states.
" 'The Ruckus' will be a key part of our 2008 campaign coverage," said Deidre Depke, editor of Newsweek.com. "We want to expose Newsweek readers to all the exciting discourse and discussion that is taking place on political blogs today. We think 'The Ruckus' will help introduce readers to a new array of voices and will encourage enlightened political discourse as the '08 race steps into high gear."
But we don't want Newsweek readers to go all crazy and actually read real political blogs; they can play dress-up over here with us instead.
The Media Bloggers Association is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of "blogging" or "citizen journalism" as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, to every citizen.
MBA Members support the freewheeling expression of ideas and strong personal opinions inherent to blogging but are equally committed to commonly accepted journalistic standards of fairness, accuracy, transparency and accountability in expressing those ideas and opinions.
I guess that's why all of the blog posts on The Ruckus are by "Anonymous."
Reading the membership page, it looks like a scam. He's offering great discounts on liability insurance, and giving seminars on how bloggers need legal advice and liability insurance. The news articles similarly focus on why bloggers should be afraid and need to get training and insurance before posting.
It's also like a vanity press, where he provides an imprint of (dubious) credibility, for a fee. Members also get a feeling of belonging to a community of like-minded (as in similarly duped) souls. But I bet it's mostly about selling insurance. Follow the money. AP is not just using him. He's using them.
Can I represent all of the internet? I mean, I'm qualified, obviously. All you have to do is call me, and I'll explain it to you.
It has something to do with marbles, and how I saved them from extinction. Really, as a blogger, it's better if you just call rather than make me, you know, blog about it.
The web site's front page was last updated in 2007. If it's an association of actual bloggers, even in-house bloggers, it's not a very active one.
I really couldn't get past this paragraph:
Some kid named Ryan Tate has a snarky little post about our efforts to help a blogger facing a legal threat over at Gawker. He claims to have tried to find out about the MBA by reading our site and searching the web. Here's a thought, kid. Pick up the phone and call us - our phone number and email is on the same site you claimed to have read.I does not say much for an organization purporting to represent bloggers when it's preferred method of presenting information about itself is phone or email, and not, well, a blog. Somehow I think Mr. Cox has missed the point.
Oh, dear, this is very childish but I have to share it. Go to the "News" page on the MBA site and scroll down to the bottom, where it excerpts the beginning of the "Live Blogging" story. Or you can view my screen cap over here.
Apparently their excerpting widget doesn't mind stopping in the middle of a word. Maybe that's all the letters their content license allows?
So, I've managed to maintain a blog for 5 years and never once hear of this Cox guy, his blog or the MBA. Grant it, I'm no bog fish or anything but for someone so conspicuously intent on representing me, he keeps a low profile.
Mary Dell @35 -- That's weird. The text is cut off at 229 characters, so if it's a programming error, it's not integer truncation.
And somehow in his rush to diss the "snarky kid" Ryan Tate, Cox at least appears to have missed that Tate is one of the editors at Gawker. Of course, that information was cleverly hidden by placing it right there at the upper right of the page that Cox linked to. Another fiendish tactic was to conceal the information in the 50,000+ hits on Google linking Ryan Tate and Gawker.
Of course he could have found by phone or email, but did not bother. How like one of those careless bloggers. . .
Pardon me if I don't click over to anything at the MBA site. I try not to look delusional thinkers in the eye.
Excuse me, please read "upper left" for "upper right" on my previous post. Thanks.
I get the idea, so you don't have to add any more examples.
While I am no bog fish, I am also no big fish. I guess that's what a day and a half of reading tiny print on the spines of library books does to my proof reading skills...
My favorite response to the AP demand is currently S.L. Veihl's. I'd quote some of it, but I can't afford dinner at a good french restaurant, I'm afraid.
Mary Dell (30), the Newsweek thing will probably be in the next installment.
That glitch on his website (35) is typical -- he's terrible at doing maintenance on it. Half his entries have gibberish in place of quotation marks. At least one entry that's been up for a long time has "placeholder" as its entry text. Whenever his site indicates there are comments on an entry, the number of comments ranges from the hundreds to the tens of thousands, but I can't find a single comment in any of them.
Really, it's more a Potemkin weblog than the real thing. Technorati lists it as having a grand total of two inbound links.
Hugh (43), my favorite comment so far was posted in the Boing Boing comment thread of Cory's first entry on the subject:
#19 posted by Elfwreck, June 17, 2008 8:03 AMI instantly circulated that one to all the Boingers plus Sarah Milstein and John Battelle.Definitely time to write some AP/RIAA slashfic. With extensive use of AP quotes.
Shockingly, now that someone with Cox's political views is involved (and likely as a result of Kos being involved as well), folks like instapundit seem to be backing down from attacking the A.P.
After watching that video, I'm thinking Cox is yet another self-important Conservative gasbag with a rather dull axe to grind.
Really. He isn't going to be speaking for me so long as I can speak for myself. The service he claims to provide is as irrelevant as he is, and his true motive may, in fact, be to scam folks into buying an unnecessary form of insurance as TomB pointed out in comment #31 and as stated on the MBA Membership page:
"A major benefit of our requiring media law training for our members is that Media Pro Insurance, a leading provider of media liability coverage to newspapers, TV networks, film companies and others, was willing to create a special insurance program to offer our members a significant discount off this type of insurance, making it affordable for many bloggers who need this type of insurance..."
But wait! There's more! Act now and receive a free set of Bob Cox Endorsed Ginsu steak knives. They slice! They dice!
Really. The only interests these jokers seem to be serving are their own, and it's distressing that the AP would even approach this guy to speak on anyone's behalf.
To me, the idea of forming an organization such as the MBA is a simply fabulous one; I hereby announce my intention to form the Writers of Letters to Editorial Pages Association (WLEPA) and the Street-Corner Soapbox Orators Association (SCSOA) in order to bring a much-needed public face to these two sadly under-represented groups.
Non-cold-polar-hell hath frozen over.... Mchll Mlkn has come out excoriating AP....
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/17/hey-associated-press-you-owe-me-at-least-132125/
There I was, all ready to write some satiritic slash involving MPAA, RIAA, AP, Mchll Mlkin, Rsh Lmbgh, Eln Dnnlly, etc., and I discover that Mchll Mlkn is excoriating AP in this?! Yipes!
Adam Lipkin, if Instapundit takes Robert Cox's word, we'll at least find out whether he's capable of being embarrassed.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden @#44: The substance of this particular glitch is what makes me so happy. Real Media Bloggers aren't satisfied with merely talking out of their asses; they've got outta-their-ass credentials!
Oooh, look what I found!
http://watchingolbermannwatch.blogspot.com/2007/02/robert-cox-attempting-to.html
I, myself, would like to announce that I am the Rabbi of the Internet.
Clifton Royston writes: "You know, I don't think I've ever mentioned here that I'm the Pope. I have a card and everything."
I'll vouch for that.
Is Lord High Everything Else still available?
Hate to tell everyone, but I've always been the Senior Grand High Poobah of the Internet. I just kept it secret all this time. Expect my High Pronouncements soon....
Or not.
Working on transcribing that video clip for those who, like myself, are lazy-of-hearing, but god damn it, he's so fatuous.
Cox's website and self-styled representation of the Internet looks a lot like a Solution in search of a Problem, and he's decided to create the Problem too.
The Register reports from the UK, with some info in differences between US and UK law in this area.
Yes, that comment is me.
Mary Dell, #30: I just want to express my admiration for the phrase "up to their duodenae"!
Lila, #54: That's it! Cox is just providing corroborative detail, intended to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
The more I think about this, the more it seems that - setting aside the Richard Cox ego campaign - the "company-owned union" concept is exactly right.
Let's trace the command-and-money flows around a little: the MBA is proclaimed to be an organization to supposedly represent bloggers who are employed by (old) media, many of which are the member/owners of AP. So this group will collect dues from and, in theory, be responsible to people who get their paychecks from media companies, who are the customers and members of the Associated Press, which this group will be negotiating with to supposedly determine the rights of those people. (Oh, and incidentally all the other bloggers, too. You know, the little people.)
Thus, should the MBA unexpectedly develop some kind of spine, the AP simply tells its organizations "tell them to stop that", the organizations tell their employees, "you cut that out", the employees tell the MBA "hey, what's with this independence stuff", and the MBA can quickly resume its proper subservient posture. Maybe they'll announce the concession that you can have up to 10 words for free!
What's particularly great is this: It sounds like he's tried to set it up as a traditional membership organization with board, etc., so Cox doesn't even have to be aware that this is how it works. If the media companies sign up enough of their house bloggers as members, he can preen and posture to his heart's content, and at his first sign of independence, the members can vote in a new board and kick him out the door. Of course, if this doesn't work, the AP still takes no damage; they just announce that they've realized the MBA does not really represent bloggers (the shock!) and goes shopping around for a fresh set of stooges.
I can admire its elegance, in a kind of twisty Machiavellian Pohl and Kornbluth way.
Thought I should chime in here that Bob Cox is not a racist. He put together MBA to be an advocate for bloggers and when it first opened membership was open, and I believe it will be open again. He is a conservative and while I find his personal opinions to be stupid, he has repeatedly bent over backwards to bring both sides in and provide access where an individual blog may be left out in the cold. Because of MBA many of us were able to cover events like the Scooter Libby Trial, this past year's debates, etc. Every time one of these issues pops up and MBA helps someone (who asks for their help), people bitch about it and then never form a counter organization and then the cycle repeats itself again.
Oliver, I respect your opinions, but Robert Cox's opinions on Arabs are something I can do without.
A general note: segment #3 is up. If you can't see it, empty your cache and reload.
The event was four hours long, it was convened by Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine and Jon Klein of CNN. The moderator was former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. In particular, participants were Jim Brady, Executive Editor of the Washingtonpost.com, Aaron Brown ex-CNN'er, Lou Dobbs of CNN, Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman of NPR, Tom Easton of The Economist magazine, Merrill Brown of MMB Media, Jonathan Landman, Deputy Managing Editor of The New York Times, Emily Lazar, producer of The Colbert Report, David Carr of The New York Times, Peter Hart of FAIR and "bloggers" Hugh Hewitt (author and radio show host), Jay Rosen (former reporter and journalism professor), Dan Gillmor (former reporter and newspaper columnist), Amanda Congdon (actress), Vaughn Ververs (former political reporter).
Vaughn Ververs describes the event as putting together newspaper editors, television executives, bloggers and critics as if this was a diverse group of people. Based on the names mentioned by Jarvis and Ververs there were 16 people at the event - all of them white, almost all of them men, almost all of them to the left politically
Oh, gosh, where to begin. Jeff Jarvis, Lou Dobbs, Vaughn Ververs, someone from FAIR, Jim Brady, Andrew Heyward and some guy from the Economist are half of a panel which was almost all to the left politically?
He was going to balance all this liberal white guyness by offering them John Amato?
Vaughn Ververs, the editor of CBS News' politics blog, is a scarequotes "blogger"?
LaShawn Barber is quite capable of providing valuable insight on the emerging media landscape as an alternative to Jay Rosen?
The mind reels.
Given the sudden profusion of esteemed positions and titles in this post I have created an umbrella organization designed to coordinate and represent these august persons as they post their way through the blogosphere:
International Dispensary: Internets Official Titles
Membership in IDIOT is limited, act now!
Lance Weber :::June 18, 2008, 03:14 PM:Given the sudden profusion of esteemed positions and titles in this post I have created an umbrella organization designed to coordinate and represent these august persons as they post their way through the blogosphere:
International Dispensary: Internets Official Titles
Membership in IDIOT is limited, act now!
Do I get a sweet insurance deal?
TNH @ 62: A general note: segment #3 is up. If you can't see it, empty your cache and reload.
I think you've inspired a new phrase:
"Robert Cox...yeah his cache is a few reloads short of being full"
"I've been monitoring reactions to the AP story. I haven't seen a single weblog indicate that it had heard of the Media Bloggers Association before this story broke."
Evidently you didn't read mine. The Media Bloggers Association became involved in this dispute because I asked them for help. I was told about them by Liza Sabater, a fellow liberal blogger who writes Culture Kitchen.
I wrote more about this today on my weblog.
You may now resume your ass-kicking.
Fragano #2: The astroturf/internet world offers so much more flexibility, though. Somewhere, by now, there must be an example of conflicts in which both sides are represented by sham organizations.
"An historic agreement was reached today between the Sham Beer Drinkers' Organization and the Madeup Brewers and Bottlers Association...."
Dan @65: Do I get a sweet insurance deal?
I'm getting a bunch of mumbo-jumbo from the insurance agent about us having the largest pool with the highest risk rating ever calculated by their underwriters. I'm on the phone with my local Wal-Mart to see if they sell any low cost plans but they keep transferring me to other departments.
Rogers Cadenhead @67: Evidently you didn't read mine.
I just did a Google on +AP +"Media Bloggers Association" and gave up after scrolling through the first four pages of results. I'm sorry, but I hardly think anyone can be blamed for overlooking your post.
You may now resume your ass-kicking.
I'm not sure your implication that there's been any kind of interlude here is accurate :)
RC, #67,
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
#67 Roger
Who are you and why should I care? Why should I be interested in reading your website content as opposed to any of the many millions of others available?
As for why I'm one of the habitues of Making Light, some of the factors involve having known Teresa and Patrick for three decades or so, in person, long before weblogs existed.... They know who I am reflexively the same way.
I don't know you, however, and why should I view you as a credible source?
I just did a Google on +AP +"Media Bloggers Association" and gave up after scrolling through the first four pages of results. I'm sorry, but I hardly think anyone can be blamed for overlooking your post.
I'm the guy at the center of this dispute, Lance! Teresa can dig into the Wayback Machine and the Wikipedia edit log to find dirt on Robert but she can't find my blog? I'm pulling her credentials.
Re #72
With his head tucked
Up into his ass
He posts on Making Light
With his head tucked
Up into his ass
Can't see daylight!
With his head tucked up into his ass
With his head tucked up into his ass!
Quoting Cox's blog (one of the entries Teresa linked to): "I always have mixed emotions about events like the one last week at the Museum of Television & Radio on the “blending of news and viewsâ€." Sic.
Why would I trust as a representative of bloggers somebody who has demonstrated so little attention to his own blogging that he hasn't bothered to learn how to avoid screwing up the character encodings on his entries in new and innovative ways?
(For the technically minded: he has apparently created the document in UTF-8, uploaded it as if it were ISO-8859-1, and his server has then converted the meaningless ISO-8859-1 to equally meaningless UTF-8 for presentation to readers. Clever.)
Paula, he really is the guy at the center of the dispute.
Rogers, Teresa said she was "monitoring reactions to the AP story". The aforementioned search currently returns ~25k hits. Rumors of omniscience to the contrary, I doubt she fully reviewed every single result.
Furthermore, while you certainly are an involved party to the inciting incident, Teresa's intent (from my perspective) is to either confirm or debunk Roger's implicit/explicit claims that MBA represents even a single blog that could possibly be considered popular by any measurement much less a substantial number of those. In either case, the assumption that your blog is a crucial component of this research whose absence is inexcusable just does not wash.
Now, if you'd come on here and simply said something to the effect of "Hi, I'm Rogers, the guy at the middle of all this - here's my posts about the mess" I think you would have gotten a lot of more positive attention.
Point taken, Lance, but I'm just offering one data point that has been overlooked in the merciless slagging that Teresa is inflicting on Robert Cox: He's involved not as a self-appointed representative of all bloggers but as a person I directly asked to help.
If I hadn't asked, and I hadn't told every reporter who calls me to also call the Media Bloggers Association, we probably aren't having this discussion at all about the MBA.
You can find more about how the MBA got involved on my weblog:
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3370
As Oliver Willis just wrote on his own blog, I'm not clear on why we have to kick the MBA's ass every time they intervene in a blogger's legal difficulties. Who else is volunteering for that job?
jeez, Paula, dial it down a notch or two, please?
Rogers seems to be perfectly legit; he linked his blog to his name where everybody can read it, and his tone seems perfectly mild to me given that he's personally invested in what's going on.
Sounds like the sort of strategy that Rove is so good at coordinating.
Love, C.
Rogers Cadenhead @#77: The issue here isn't what MBA and Robert Cox may have done for you, although that's interesting and I'm glad you posted here. The problem is the AP announcement, that Robert Cox is presumably a party to. As Teresa quotes above, The Associated Press [...] plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.
That's not about your case; that's about all of the future cases the AP is planning to create. Robert Cox, on his blog, talks about the need for a set of guidelines; he's working with the AP to create those guidelines. That's why he's become a target, not because he helped you with your case. He's actively involved in helping the AP in their attempt to limit the rights of bloggers, and he's allowing the AP to talk about the MBA as "a bloggers group," which implies that it's an advocacy organization, when really it's a professional association with limited membership, controlled by Robert Cox.
Guys! So there are dumb-sses who come on strong right outta the gate here! We're solid enough to let them. It's getting a bit insular at ML IMNSHO, and I think we should treat the noobs gently to see if they sort out into interesting people after the first firey clash has simmered down. Like, I regarded placeholder's "uncle" on the other thread as a mark of someone not wholly lost.
I note that before Cox's "AP, Bloggers and Self-Appointed Groups" post of yesterday on his blog, his last preceding post was on March 5th of this year. Hardly an active blog.
Making Light has more main posts in any reasonably active two-month period than this guy put up in the entire two-year history of his blog.
I noticed the same thing that Teresa did about the comments -- huge numbers of comments, but impossible to read them. I bet that if we ever do get to read them that they'll be endless inducements to click through for Cheap Viagra, On-Line Poker, and Hot Gay Teens.
Rogers, the point is more that Cox seems to be a self-appointed representative of bloggers.
"He's actively involved in helping the AP in their attempt to limit the rights of bloggers ..."
Anything's possible, but I don't believe that to be the case. When Cox's group helps a blogger reach a settlement in a legal dispute, one of their conditions is that there are terms they won't agree to. For instance, they won't settle a blog libel suit by removing something from the web that's true.
Oliver can say more on this since he's a founding member, but the MBA isn't a newly concocted group providing cover to narrow blogger's rights. They've been involved in this for a while, and their creation was motivated by Cox's own experience getting sued. They get 5-10 calls a week from bloggers in legal trouble. I've heard from people at the EFF who vouch for their work.
Some intrepid commenters over at Gawker have done some digging and it looks like MBA is a scam.
#75 Bill
Ah. I didn't realize that--it was not clear from his post here.
Note in general: yes, if one wants to get that sort of point across, one ought to specify in sufficient detail and emphasis and clarity, "here is my point and why."
His post at #67 read,
"I've been monitoring reactions to the AP story. I haven't seen a single weblog indicate that it had heard of the Media Bloggers Association before this story broke."
Evidently you didn't read mine. The Media Bloggers Association became involved in this dispute because I asked them for help. I was told about them by Liza Sabater, a fellow liberal blogger who writes Culture Kitchen.
I wrote more about this today on my weblog.
You may now resume your ass-kicking.
To break down my reactions:
"I've been monitoring reactions to the AP story. I haven't seen a single weblog indicate that it had heard of the Media Bloggers Association before this story broke."
This paragraph is a straight quote from Teresa at the start of this thread. Okay, this is setting context.
Evidently you didn't read mine.
This is a combatative statement, or rather, comes off as pugnacious, putting the responsibility on the reader to have a clue in a bucket about "who is this poster, why should I be reading the poster's blog? There is nothing so far putting the poster involved in anything in the thread as a participant, and the poster's name has no connection to anything for me--as opposed to if Fragano posted, or Serge, or CHip, or Bill Higgins, or xopher, etc.
The Media Bloggers Association became involved in this dispute because I asked them for help.
Askedthem for help for what? I missed I admit the "this dispute"--it's a prepositional phrase, which usually are not main constituents and main points of a sentence, which is in between a non-direct verb form ("became involved") and and a subordinate clause--and not only that, "became" and "because" kinaeshetically in print, are VERY much similar-looking, the visual differice is that one has "m" where the other has "au", the two words visually otherwise are identically, and aurally, they are also start the same with the same unaccented first syllable followed by a
"k" sound and only get differentiated audibly with ame versus ause.
So, I missed the "in this dispute" and instead it registers in my mind as "in a dispute."
The subordinate clause, because I asked them for didn't say anything why the poster asked the organization for help, however, why is the topic of the next sentence, which is in a new paragraph. And once again, I had missed the "
this" in "in this dispute." There wasn't any more information about the dispute in the post, to get background or reiterating/reinforcing information.
I was told about them by Liza Sabater, a fellow liberal blogger who writes Culture Kitchen.
The sentence above is in passive voice, and puts Liza Sabater and that she is a liberal blogger with some blog that there is no other information about, as the key information in the sentence. There's nothing about why anyone should regard Liza Sabater as any sort of authority on anything, no information about her blog other than the poster claims that it's a liberal blog and that the poster is a liberal blogger....
I wrote more about this today on my weblog.
Again, what I got from this sentence wasn't useful information, since there's no information about what the dispute is other than that "this" that I missed.... an additional sentence saying SOMETHING specific/denotative about the content of the blog would have helped a lot and provided a different stimulus than the eliciting the post DID get from me.
You may now resume your ass-kicking.
This is a definite pugnacious challenge... and this is not a forum full of passive viewers sitting in an audience expecting to get hired hand entertainment for a financial entry free... wrong part of the psychosphere for that (there is a very long-standing conversation in science fiction convention running fandom about people who go to events to pay their money and be entertained, versus conventions when people pay for memberships and -engage- with other people.... Making Light comes, my perception is, from the engagement tradition. Saying "resume you ass-kicking" in this form has the connotation of just having INVITED people like me to go into attack mode in response.
The next post #72 had
I'm the guy at the center of this dispute, Lance! Teresa can dig into the Wayback Machine and the Wikipedia edit log to find dirt on Robert but she can't find my blog? I'm pulling her credentials.
There was no information about what "this dispute" was other than the words "this dispute," and again, I was NOT reading something that said the "this dispute" was the AP issue!!! So, when the next two sentences looked like an attack against Teresa, her level of clue, and her ability to research, THAT was was elicited the response from me....
Over on Roger "I represent all bloggers, really" Cox's blog, there appears to be something missing...
Oh, yeah. No comments. None. No "Leave a Comment" link. No "View Comments" links. Nothing, nada and, in fact, zip.
Perhaps (just perhaps) Mr. Cox is missing the point on this whole "blog" thing? You know, the feedback, the dialogue, the stuff that makes Making Light (and many other blogs) so great?
digging back, via FDL:
Cox got two passes for his group. There were three other bloggers with passes: Justin Rood (TPM), emptywheel (Next Hurrah/dKos) and Jane Hamsher (FDL/Huffington).
There was also a little dustup where Cox apparently represented himself to the NY Times as having 'negotiated access' for all the bloggers, following which the Times had to print a correction that he only got access for his own group.
Teresa @44:
You win, and please pass the brain bleach.
I think what I find disturbing is that an invitation-only organization is negotiating terms on behalf of "bloggers" with a company which is making demands that exceed their legal rights.
If bloggers choose to negotiate away their rights, they certainly may. I'm not completely comfortable with a private entity which doesn't represent non-members taking it on themselves to do it.
Paula @ 86
Liza Sabater is a fairly well-known liberal blogger in New York. She gets linked to by the local media a lot. Someone from our market would probably assume everyone would recognize the name.
#86, me
"He called the Enterprise a garbage scow!"
"And that's when [you hit the Klingon, starting the fight?]"
"Aye, Captain."
It was the attack on Teresa that got to me.
Rogers Cadenhead @#84, Robert Cox explains it thusly on
Now, once they had agreed to meet to see if we could resolve Rogers situation, we offered to provide any assistance we could in helping them draft some sort of guidelines that could be promulgated to the blogosphere so that bloggers would have a clear understanding of AP's point of view on copyright, excerpting and linking. They were receptive to that offer and so when we meet this week to get Rogers case resolved (hopefully) we will stick around and try to kick around ideas on what a set of guidelines would look like.
He is using your case to create an opportunity for his association to "provide assistance" to the AP, in getting their point of view on copyright promulgated to the blogosphere.
That seems like a serious conflict of interest to me. When he's done with the part of the meeting that's about representing you, whose interests will he be representing?
That may be the single greatest response to any comment I've ever made on the Internet, Paula.
I can't tell you how glad I am to have joined the WorldCon committees to vote on Hugos and start inching back into science fiction fandom.
But I digress.
re 3: Do you mean this bad Wikipedia entry?
julia #90
That's an assumption that didn't fly in my case... there have been world experts I've known whose names are not known outside their areas of expertise. Assuming that someone is a Media Personality to the universe tends to be a bad assumption.
The most that can be assumed about someone posting on Making Light, is that the person is posting on Making Light, probably has a computer or at least has computer access, and probably has enough web literacy to have posted it themself (given some of the spam that shows up, it's not clear that even that much is true....).
People/handles gain or lose credibility points according to content and content over time. Someone known to some fraction of the habitues who posts with a recognizable name/handle/referential content, has baggage coming in, based on past history that generally is outside of Making Light.
There are a number of different venues possible for that--science fiction conventions, publishing, fanzines, music connections, weblogs, knitting connections, etc. Assuming that someone from one sphere is known to people with tie-ins from other spheres, again, is a bad assumption... while one might be six people from just about anyone on the planet, that doesn't mean that person A two degrees away from Person B, has a clue in a galaxy about person B.... there are LOTS of links that remain never explored, sometimes I get surprised even with the SF universe, that A and B have never met, when they're both people I've been acquainted with for years....
Who else is volunteering for that job?
There are other organizations* that help bloggers.
They tend to take cases with constitutional implications, and they are limited in how many they can take.
However, that is orthogonal to the question of how the MBA represents itself / is represented in the media.
There's a big difference if the AP knows it's dealing with and working out the situation with (or dictating their modified terms to) one specific blogger and his representative, vs. the AP dealing with and working out the 21st century implications of the already complex area of fair use.
_____________
* They mention their blogger-specific work on journalist rights, free speech rights, political speech rights, right to anonymity, and freedom from liability in hosting speech. They specifically list Eli Lilly Zyprexa Litigation; Deihl v. Crook, Spocko and KSFO, Apple v. Does; Barrett v. Rosenthal; OPG v. Diebold and Doe Anonymity Cases.
I still think the MBA is nothing more than a scam designed to sell bloggers some sort of insurance they don't freakin' need in the first place, and I find it kind of suspect (or total bullshit) that they get "5 to 10 calls a week" from bloggers facing litigation.
Roger, your sarcasm is lost in whatever effect you intended it to have on me. It's possible that I know you in person, even. Don't flatter yourself that you're specially privileged in me not matching face to name if that's true, there are people I've known for decades who if my life depended on being able to identify them by name, I would be long since moldering in a casket buried in Sharon Memorial Park (an aunt bequeathed me a burial lot there, she was gifted with it by a lifelong friend who decided to be buried in Florida where she'd moved to, instead of Massachusetts with the rest of her extended family, who probably are very distant relatives of my late aunt and thus myself).
And as for social skills, there was the occasion at a Boskone after I'd said to someone "your social skills are even worse than mine" that mentioning the incident to a prominent member of the Making Light community (if the person remembers and wants to self-identify, the reason I'm not is that I leave it up to the person if the person notices and remembers) deflated me by saying, "No, [name of person] is not more socially clueless than you, [name of person] is intentionally nasty, not socially clueless."
However... it looks like you're trying to challenge for lack of social clue, or perhaps merely being gratuitously nasty, or some combination of both.
Rogers Cadenhead, given the position you're in, I'd forgive you if you took help from Dick Cheney, Justice Taney, and Lucifer himself.
Everybody, Rogers Cadenhead is the guy who does Drudge Retort. I don't know what he's like in normal circumstances, because I've never been in the habit of reading his
Comments on AP to negotiate with sham "Media Bloggers Association":