When a Brookfield alderman launched a Web site to promote and pummel candidates in local elections, he took a step that perhaps no other blogger in Wisconsin has taken.
He registered under state campaign finance rules as an independent person trying to influence voters.
Ald. Scott Berg even filled out a form listing every elected official and challenger he would advocate for and against on his site, www.brookfield2006.com. He signed an oath that he is operating independent of any candidate.
Berg says he's being careful and following the letter of the law even if he thinks it infringes on his right to free speech.
That's because state elections law says that anyone who spends more than $25 a year to advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate without that candidate's knowledge or control must register with the state as an independent committee and disclose the sources of the money spent and how it was expended.
Should bloggers be regarded as a part of the news media, exempt from such rules, or should they be seen as partisan actors in a campaign who must register? Few bloggers draw the line where Berg did.
"This is free speech, and it should be protected," said Cory Liebmann, a Milwaukee private investigator who pens the lefty blog, www.eyeonwisconsin.com.
"It's absurd to ask bloggers to register through campaign finance laws or otherwise," he said. "I'm a one-man show. This is my opinion. Why should I be regulated for my opinions?"
Conservative blogger John McAdams, a Marquette University political science professor, couldn't agree more.
Even anonymous bloggers should be protected from having to fill out financial reports related to their political speech, said McAdams, who writes on www.mu-warrior .blogspot.com.
"Let's say you're in the Legislature and you want to spill the beans on some things or just spread some gossip," he said. "There are instances where you have to be anonymous."
Internet rules under review
Neither state nor federal elections officials have ensnared bloggers or podcasters into campaign finance regulation.
However, bloggers are concerned about a federal district judge's ruling that the Federal Elections Commission went too far in 2002 when it tried to exempt almost all Internet activity from campaign finance oversight.
And some critics are concerned a regulation-free Internet would create another loophole for political groups to raise and spend large sums of soft money to influence elections.
The FEC is in the process of rewriting its rules involving the Internet. But commissioners advised bloggers they may remain free of regulation when they issued an advisory opinion in November extending the so-called press exemption from campaign finance laws to Fired Up! America. That Democratic Web site unabashedly pushes to elect Democratic candidates.
That would make bloggers the "new media," receiving the same exemptions as those media outlets already specifically covered by law. Those outlets are "any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication . . . unless the facility is owned or controlled by any political party, political committee or candidate."
Internet sites need not be balanced, accurate or objective to be given press freedoms, according to the commission's advisory opinion.
Minimal regulation sought
While some Internet free speech advocates believe the press exemption is the solution, others say a better way to protect bloggers would be to set a monetary threshold, and bloggers who spend less would be free from any regulation.
John Morris, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, which pushes for minimal oversight on Internet political speech, favors a spending limit.
Some blogs are akin to news media; others clearly are not and don't even want to be viewed as such, Morris said.
Most bloggers spend less than $150 a year, Morris said. Many are free. In a November study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, some 8 million Americans said they had created a blog.
But the more popular a blog gets, the more bandwidth is needed and the more expensive it gets.
DailyKos.com, a nationally prominent blog site that boasts 20 million unique visits per month, spends about $150,000 a year on operations. Its ads can cost thousands of dollars, its creator, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, testified before the FEC last June.
Bill Christofferson, a Democratic political strategist who ran Gov. Jim Doyle's campaign in 2002 and now writes the liberal blog, the Xoff files ( www.wisopinion.com/blogs/xofffiles.html), says a simple media exemption is preferable.
"I think bloggers are in some ways in the same category as the news media in that newspapers editorialize about issues and candidates all the time," he said. "Talk radio spends 16 to 24 hours a day doing the same thing."
McAdams, the conservative blogger, said, "You have to twist logic into a complete pretzel to say that blogs aren't a form of journalism."
When blogs sell ad space to candidates, political parties and committees, the blog shouldn't have to disclose that revenue, McAdams said, just as newspapers and broadcast stations don't report monies received for political advertising to elections officials.
But the campaigns themselves, candidates and parties, must disclose monies spent on Web services, blogs, listservs, e-mail and the like.
The Wisconsin State Elections Board has never had to opine on whether bloggers are subject to campaign finance reporting but would probably regard them as news media, said the board's executive director, Kevin Kennedy.
"This activity is sort of at the core of standing on the soapbox in the park," said George Dunst, the board's legal counsel.
The chairman of the state Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, Rep. Stephen Freese (R-Dodgeville), said he believed not all blogs should be regulation free.
"It depends on what their purpose is," Freese said. "If the blog is created to advocate the election or defeat of someone, they should (file). If it is solely a newsgathering organization, then that's much different."
That type of ambiguity prompted the Brookfield alderman to fill out the campaign finance forms.
Berg said he likely will spend about $20 in monthly fees to run his Web site, or about $100 between now and the spring elections.
While Berg was willing to wade into complicated campaign finance rules, that could scare others from using the Internet as their town hall square, said Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"The potential for chilling smaller speakers is directly counterproductive to campaign finance laws, which are intended to moderate the impact of big money in campaigns," Morris said. "Congress needs to step in and clarify this for individuals . . . with a very simple and easy to understand exemption."
