Hey, blogosphere! Looks like we made it! In a pair of decisions made yesterday that will make it increasingly difficult to continue raging against the so-called "MSM," the Federal Election Commission has ruled that "political blogs and bloggers are media for the purposes of US Electoral Law." Naturally, playing a key role in all the gatecrashing was that Bill O'Reilly bete noire, DailyKos:
Conservative blogger John C.A. Bambenek claimed that [DailyKos] should comply with campaign finance laws because it charges a fee to place advertising on its website and it provides "a gift of free advertising and candidate media services" by posting blog entries that support candidates. The FEC determined that the website falls "squarely" within the media exemption and is therefore not subject to federal regulation under the Act; ipso facto: under US law blogs are formally recognized as media organizations.
So, as far as the FEC is concerned, political bloggers are free to make with the same sort of free speech that massive piles of corporate soft money make every election year. The only difference being that if a massive pile of soft money called Bill Richardson a "buffoon," Richardson would probably "apologize."
RelatedFEC Determines That Blogs Count As Media [TechCrunch]