Legistorm: Transparency's Sidekick

Like many web sites, we try to keep tabs on how people are using our site. We are usually pleased to see mention of us, even if we don't always agree with the way our site's data is used. Accountability can be messy sometimes and that means that dull-witted analyses often appear alongside sharp insights in the public arena.

But this new age of blogging can also lead to some downright irresponsible claims about members of Congress and their staff. And whenever congressional aides are mentioned in news stories, LegiStorm is usually cited as a source, at least for salary and other public record data we have.

This past weekend, a story has been circulating on the web about a member of Congress and a staffer. We won't mention who because the story was so lacking in any indicia of truthfulness that as far as we can tell, it was made up from whole cloth.

One somewhat prominent St. Louis conservative blogger, Gateway Pundit, carried a breathless story about "news" that a Democratic congressman was caught up in a "sex scandal" with his aide. There was dark talk of hundreds of thousands of dollars in "hush money." He helpfully linked to the staffer's pay on our site, which amounted to little more than $12,000 in two quarters.

Gateway Pundit's only stated source for the allegations was a link to the Google web cache of an unsourced comment made by an anonymous reader on a relatively obscure out-of-state newspaper's web site. The Gateway Pundit resorted to linking to the Google cache because the newspaper's web editors noticed the unsourced and libelous claim on their site and had taken it down.

So in essence, a blogger considered it appropriate to use the comment of an anonymous reader of a newspaper he had probably never heard of before as his only source for a major allegation to besmirch the reputation of a member of Congress and a very junior aide who made a relative pittance from the taxpayers. And he wasn't even bothered by the fact that the newspaper had considered the claim so scurrilous that it had withdrawn it from its site before he linked to the only remaining trace of the claim. Something is seriously wrong here, even in the freewheeling world of blogging.

Now we don't actually know that this story is untrue. It's almost impossible to prove a negative. Maybe the "BIG-BIG-BIG Update" on this story that the blogger promises will have some merit. But given all the true scandals that are going on in Washington, we also know that to even dignify investigating, it should require at least some scintilla of evidence, however questionable its accuracy. This rumor didn't even rise to that low level, much less to a level worthy of publication. And of course, the blogosphere being what it is, the blog post has been picked up by others, including the heavily trafficked Free Republic site.

In our two years of existence, we have been happy to serve as a source for reporters and bloggers, even those with agendas across the entire political spectrum. That's what we are here for. But we do have concerns about being enlisted as allies in the cause of people who have no concern for the truth whatsoever.