Ken Silverstein from Harpers is at it again, accusing the DoD’s blogger outreach program of being a right-wing propaganda machine (even though there are liberals on the e-mail outreach list, including me).
This time, Ken set his sights on Michael Allen Leach (right), who is working for the DoD’s new media operation. Media reports from the 2000 election brought him 15 minutes of fame in 2000 when they reported that he, while a staffer for the Florida Republican party, spent days salvaging incorrectly filled out absentee ballots, the majority of which — but not all — were Republican ballots.
Never mind that there are roughly a dozen people working in that department of the Pentagon’s public affair’s shop, or that several of them are Democrats. It is important to single out this one guy!
Still, this story, and Silverstein for that matter, aren’t going away. So Roxie and Allison, the way I see it, you have two options:
- Actively recruit someone from Daily Kos, MyDD, The Huffington Post or another liberal blog to be a part of the blogger roundtables.
- Make a high-level liberal hire on your staff. Do it quickly, and parade him/her and his/her liberal credentials in front of a few journalists.
Hopefully that will be enough to kill this story. For good.
Update: I have modified the post from its original version after an e-mail conversation with Leach. I won’t get into all the details, but I will say that, after hearing from him, I think he was a great hire for the blog team. Even if he is a Republican partisan.
Update 2: Mountain Runner has a great post about Silverstein. Go check it out.
Update 3: Another great post from Jason at Armchair Generalist, the doyen of liberal milbloggers.
