Undercover persuasion by tech industry lobbyists

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042305249_pf.html

persuasion by tech industry lobbyists
By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 24, 2010; A01 

Why pay for a golf trip, dinner or full-page ad when you can tweet for free?

The influence peddlers of K Street have discovered the power of social networking on such Web sites as Twitter and 
Facebook. Using their own names without mentioning that they work in public relations or as lobbyists, employees of 
companies with interests in Washington are chattering online to shape opinions in hard-to-detect ways.

Take PJ Rodriguez, whose Twitter profile says he's a pop culture maven and cable blogger. He tweets about "American 
Idol," Dora the Explorer and wonky tech policy issues, like broadband jurisdiction at the Federal Communications 
Commission.

"Former FCC Chairman Powell: cable has never been regulated in a Title II common carrier fashion," he wrote recently, 
one of several 140-characters-or-fewer missives he fires off daily on the site.

What's not as clear is that he is a public relations staffer being supported by such companies as Comcast, Cox and Time 
Warner Cable as the Web 2.0 point person for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, an industry trade 
group. Nowhere on his profile does he mention NCTA or provide a link to its site.

Tweets, blogs and comments on news sites can draw big audiences and popular support for a variety of causes, from tech 
policy to health care and energy regulation. But they provide a shade of gray in the lobbying world, where enormous 
influence is being exercised with few rules of engagement about spending and disclosure.

"It's a bit of a Wild West, because anyone can be anyone on the Web and it's harder to tell where the line between work 
and the person's non-work life is," said John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation. "The whole 
enterprise of lobbying disclosure is hard to apply hard-and-fast standards to and hard to regulate. Add to that the way 
we interact socially through technology, which is changing the lines around our traditional roles."

The hot policy debate




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