Josh Marshall raises a crucial issue for Democratic blogs:

It is remarkable, or perhaps it's not so remarkable, how rapidly this punching match over race has escalated between the Clinton and Obama camps.

I agree.

Some of the statements recently attributed to the Clintons have seemed at best awkward in how they're discussing race and the civil rights movement, others have struck me as unobjectionable statements interpreted in a tendentious fashion.

I agree.

You can see in our news section we've picked up the story just out from The Guardian which quotes some unidentified "Clinton advisor" saying: "If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

WTF??? 

On the surface this is a ridiculously stupid stereotyping statement. But why on earth would a serious blogger like Josh Marshall use a blind quote that is divisive and attribute it to an unidentified "Clinton advisor"???

We all know there are people trying to stir up divisions inside the Democratic coalition. They're doing it now and they will do it until election day.

Who are these people? Most likely they are Republicans or Liebercrats (hello Dan Gerstein!). But if they are real Democrats, they could just as easily be supporters of Obama, Edwards, or Kucinich as "Clinton advisors." Hell, it could even be a reporter/editor trying to manufacture buzz.

Remember the Kerry quotes that Fox's Carl Cameron simply invented to smear Kerry???

Josh does acknowledge the meaningless of calling someone an "advisor"

'advisor' is a notoriously slippery phrase that can mean almost anything. Campaigns have hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who in one fashion or another 'advise' them. A lot of those people aren't under any kind of real control.

Still, Josh assumes that someone identified anonymously as an "advisor" by a reporter is actually a formal member of the campaign team. But why should we assume that? If I go to a Hillary rally and yell "Go Hillary" could a "journalist" call me an "advisor"? How about if I send an email to info@hillaryclinton.com? What if the Clinton campaign asks me to fix their hard drive and I offer an opinion on health care policy - or race relations? We know that journalists have no ethics so we should we assume anything they do is above-board?

Josh Marshall is smarter than that and should know better. We, the blogosphere, can hold ourselves to higher standards than the Corporate Media, which is thoroughly discredited due to its partisanship, sloppiness, and lies (see Cameron, Carl or Miller, Judith).

Here are several principles that should govern how bloggers handle this stuff that would make our coverage better than corporate media coverage:

1. Always name names both of initiators and angry reactors - otherwise don't use the quote.

2. Provide complete quotes in full context - otherwise don't use the quote. (Better yet, provide audio or video.)

3. Fully disclose the candidate affiliations of initiators and reactors.

4. Fully disclose whether their statements were formally approved or simply personal opinions - never assume approval based simply on "affiliation."

5. If a remark becomes controversial, provide full opportunity for initiators to clarify ambiguous or possibly misinterpreted remarks, and then provide full opportunity for reactors to reply to this clarification.

If progressive blogs adopt these principles, we can avoid divisive and self-defeating battles over anonymous, unauthorized, or distorted quotes - and concentrate all our firepower on beating the Republicans.