CHAPTERS:THE NET EFFECT: How Cyberadvocacy Is Changing The Political Landscape

By Daniel Bennett and Pam Fielding

Chapter Two: Caught in the Net: A New Mass Medium

Storming the Castle

Armed guards were stationed around the printing presses as copies of the Independent Counsel’s Report on the Impeachment (Starr report) were churned out. The House of Representatives had demanded maximum security during the printing operation. The Government Printing Office (GPO) was printing the Starr report, and House leadership saw it as a historic document ranking with the Warren Committee Report on the Kennedy Assassination, the Watergate materials, and the Iran-Contra materials.

After all, this report concerned the most significant political occurrence possible in American political history, the potential removal from office of a President of the United States. Thousands of copies of the Starr report rolled off the presses well protected from any disruption or theft from the outside.

“We had a strict requirement from the House of Representatives to have the utmost security practice while we printed the publication. So as a result we had armed police officers stationed at key production points throughout the plant, including right here in the pressroom. And in terms of the other publications we’ve had, such as the Warren Report on the Kennedy Assassination, the Watergate materials, the Iran-Contra materials, certainly it ranks up there with those publications.” Andy Sherman, spokesman for the GPO, told Weekend All Things Considered on Feb 13, 1999.

Copies were destined for delivery to Congress and for sale to the American public at Government Printing Office retail stores. Later, escorted by police officers, government couriers hand-delivered printed copies of the Starr report to each congressional office. This document began the awesome process of impeachment; a process that would end as members of Congress cast a vote that would rock the nation and exercise a power granted the Congress as a last resort against tyranny.

The Independent Counsel, Judge Kenneth Starr, had spent four long years investigating the President. In January 1998, he had found damaging allegations against the President that he would argue were the high crimes and misdemeanors that should trigger impeachment. But several months passed before Judge Starr issued his report, during which the news media spent endless hours speculating about what Starr had uncovered, mobbing the courthouse where he conducted the grand jury proceedings, and staking out the residences and hotel rooms of each of the people involved in the investigation.

The main question was: Would Starr’s report include allegations and evidence that would bring down the Presidency?

Once the Office of the Independent Counsel indicated that the report was ready to be sent to Congress, the House leadership was sensitive to the need to follow the rules closely as the impeachment process began. And Starr and the House leadership were cognizant of the heavy media coverage of the unfolding drama.

Unlike the usual transport of government documents between buildings, there was great fanfare in the delivery of the Starr report. Vans packed with boxes pulled up on the parking lot of the Capitol building. With cameras rolling, the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives took the boxes from the vans that had come from the Office of the Independent Counsel, while uniformed Capitol Police kept watch, the Sergeant at Arms locked the boxes behind heavy wooden doors to wait until rules regarding their distribution had been voted on. The Republican House Leadership, knowing that the contents of the report were deeply embarrassing to the Democratic President, insisted on as open a process as possible, and the House of Representatives voted to make the report available to as wide an audience as possible, and with great haste.

In addition to reprinting the document as is normal with public documents, the House leadership decided to release an electronic version of the report through the Thomas Web site, the Library of Congress’s main repository for legislative documents. Despite the pomp and circumstance surrounding the printing and delivery of the printed version, an effort that would have once been vital for the orderly distribution of a document, it would soon become obvious that the Internet had made the paper delivery process nearly obsolete.

The distribution of the electronic version of the Starr report was available hours before the printed copies and in quantities that far surpassed the number that would be printed. Thirty (or even three) years ago, the thousands of printed copies would have been the primary means of release for the report. But now, just a few years into the Digital Age, the Starr report flowed like water over a collapsing dam to millions of citizens across the country in just a few hours.

In just a few years the Internet had been transformed from a little used electronic network to a mass medium rivaling the reach of all the other media. And the Internet had built-in characteristics that allowed it to out pace television, provide more in-depth coverage than newspapers, out talk “talk radio”, and scoop major magazines. And with the release of the Starr report, the Internet had become a primary means for the U.S. Government to release documents to the public, less dramatic but infinitely faster than the carefully guarded books.

Politicians and the media were talking about history being made that day, but the more enduring and significant change was that the Internet and politics were now forever bound together.

The early release of the Starr report was due to the hard work of a few young Internet pioneers. The change from old to new media is never a smooth process. There are no rules or handbooks to guide the pioneers who create new techniques to suit a new medium. These pioneers are often energetic, young, savvy professionals who are out to prove the tried-and-true methods are now archaic. And in 1998, a few young people made their mark by using the Internet technology and quick thinking to help get the Starr report out to the public.

Potentially, any individual can quickly become a powerful publisher; potentially, any organization can instantaneously mount a mass movement. But to achieve these feats of near magic, there have to be people who understand the capabili-ties of the technology—or at least know how to hire people who do.

A Few Young Geeks

“No, thank you.” It was a polite response to the offer made by Laura Dove, staff person with the Senate Republican Conference. But it was not the right response to what turned out to be a phenomenal opportunity. Laura Dove had been calling reporters and news desks offering a two or three hour lead at getting the Starr report, and at least one news desk editor refused the offer. Why would any news outlet turn this down? Because they simply did not understand the offer, and because they did not understand the dynamics of information distribution on the Web. When the House voted to make the report public and the House leadership decided to electronically publish the report, they received an electronic file from the Office of the Independent Counsel. Members of Congress were to get a paper version just prior to the public release—and they would also be able to access the report from a Web page accessible to offices within the House of Representatives. The House had set up a process by which the Starr report, which had been under lock and key, would become public.

The Office of the Independent Counsel worked with the Clerk of the House’s office and the Committees on Judiciary and House Administration (then called the House Committee on House Oversight) to decipher the report, a WordPerfect document originally, and convert it into formats appropriate for printing and for posting on the Web. The printed version of the Starr report, like any other official document, is treated as the official version. The electronic version, especially when on a Web site, is treated as an inexact copy for many reasons.

Being an official version, the Government Printing Office quickly set the presses to print copies with the intentionally dramatic and unusual presence of armed guards.

The process by which the electronic version was created and transported was much less formal and without additional security that is normal for House offices. The Clerk of the House made the electronic version for distribution. That version was produced on CD-ROM, a CD (compact disc) that holds electronic data. CD-ROM copies of the report were hand delivered to the Library of Congress and the House Press Gallery. Because CD-ROMs are physical objects they could not be delivered electronically. They had to be physically transported to their intended recipients, just like paper copies. The CD-ROM was intended to be an accurate copy of the official document. Unlike most electronically delivered documents, but like bound paper copies, the CD-ROMs could not be easily changed.

The mechanics of this distribution were counter intuitive to an Internet-aware person like Laura Dove. The Web is a new medium that does not fit into the neat categories of earlier media. And it doesn’t work in the halls of Congress the way newspapers, radio stations, and television do. The established journalists have press passes and can ride an elevator reserved for themselves and members of Congress to the press gallery. Various journalists can pigeonhole a Member and perhaps get the inside scoop.

But Dove, who herself once worked for an online political news site, knew of a very different type of journalist. Working with James Smith, a very proficient Web technology expert in the House Majority Whip’s office, and some other staffers, she helped to set up a super fast distribution plan for the hottest document to hit the town in decades. It was this CD-ROM version that the news desk chief had been expecting when Laura Dove called and offered her unofficial version. The more official electronic copy, hot off the press— actually a CD burner—was to be delivered to the press gallery. And eventually it probably showed up, but not until several hours after Smith and Dove had already electronically distributed their unofficial version.

From within the House they copied the version from the House internal Web site where the report was initially posted for House offices only. Of course, that version was easily reproducible. Smith digitally compressed it to make it smaller and more easily e-mailed or downloaded. Many other House offices were similarly making printed copies for internal consumption and perhaps to distribute to others. The House had no rules for redistributing the report once an office had officially received it in electronic or in paper form.

Then, for those journalists who showed interest in receiving the much anticipated document, the compressed copy was e-mailed or FTP’ed to two or three dozen major news outlets. (“FTP’ed” is colloquial for using an Internet program that allows efficient movement of files over the Internet.) Within minutes the world had access to the report, waiting no longer than most members of Congress had. And it was this copy that the House Press Gallery had on its computer system.

No rules or laws had been broken. It was merely a question of procedure, of whether old notions of how to distribute information are valid anymore. Smith and Dove had made themselves more valuable to journalists by providing this favor, one of the most important jobs in congressional offices. It didn’t change the general story; it was not a “leak.”

But in the age of the Internet, speed counts and there are no longer any excuses for delays in distributing information. And, because the Internet is immediate, any other method of distribution is a form of delay.

Congress is filled with young staffers, and when you ask them “Paper or e-mail?” the answer for most of them is: “What’s paper?” For the older members of Congress, this was revolutionary. And in voting to release the report unedited over the Internet they had done something quite revolutionary. Smith and Dove had given the country two additional hours to read the report for itself before the nightly news and morning newspapers put their own spin on the meaning of the Starr report. And Laura Dove was probably one of the most rules conscious people in the Senate, her father being the Senate’s Parliamentarian (the official in charge of the rules of the Senate).

Dash/Dot/Dash

“What Hath God Wrought!” telegraphed Samuel F. B. Morse over a hundred and fifty years before the electronic release of the Starr report. Morse had used transcendent language to describe the telegraph in the first publicly sent electronic message. From within the Capitol, a building representing the aspirations of a free people to govern themselves, Morse had started a communications revolution. This new technology was intended to empower the people to better their society.

Samuel F. B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph directly presaged the creation—a century later—of the Internet. The shape of Morse’s medium was determined both by its strengths and its limitations. Essentially, the telegraph was an on-off switch that could be operated at a great distance, producing clicks of various lengths. Morse helped turn those clicks into the standardized alphabet of long and short clicks we know as Morse code. Dot/dash was A. Dash/dot/dot/dot was B. Three short clicks made an S, three long clicks an O. Thus, dot/dot/dot • dash dash/dash • dot/dot/dot is the SOS that became an interna-tional distress call. Dot/dot/dot/dash, the four notes at the heart of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, became V, the signal of Victory during the Second World War.7

Morse code required skilled operators to send and receive messages. It would never become the medium of the ordinary citizen. But Alexander Graham Bell’s invention, the telephone, provided the ease of use that allowed ordinary citizens to adopt an electronic communication technology. With the advent of radio and television, electronic media could become mass media, but—unlike the telephone—these mass media were not interactive.

Electronic communication has played a huge role in American politics. From the radio propaganda of Father Charles E. Coughlin and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats in the 1930s to Richard M. Nixon’s televised “Checkers” speech, politicians made use of the pervasive reach of technology to talk directly to the popula-tion. In this same way, the release of the Starr report signaled the coming of age of a new technology that is going to play a commanding role in politics. Communication is the vehicle of politics and the Internet is the most powerful political vehicle yet built.

The Internet is a network of connected computers, allowing users to read, listen, write, and talk between any computers on that network. The two computer applications that are the most compelling for average users are e-mail and the World Wide Web. Sending and receiving e-mail is quickly replacing written personal correspondence and paper memoranda. And the Web is replacing the printing press.

The Internet was born out of a project to connect major computer centers around the United States. Conceived as an interlocking network of connections that would continue to function even if some of the connections failed, the network was first called ARPANET after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Several applications were developed that allowed the users on the networked computers to use any other computer on the network. But the network started between computers that were not generally available to the public and the applications and the computers took training to use. It was not until many advances had been made and there existed a wider distribution of personal computers in the eighties that the Internet became a huge phenomenon.

One Internet application that made the final and most compel-ling reason for the Internet to explode was the “Web browser.” In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way to allow scientists at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, to connect the overwhelming number of scientific papers, reports, and projects scattered on all the computers. He created a new document format that everyone could view through one computer program that would be available to all. And he developed a new computer protocol that allowed people to get access to those documents on computers other than their own without their own computer being similar to the one being accessed and without needing any prior authority to gain access.

The Web has evolved quickly into an engine of new commercial growth and openness in elections and government. The Web and the underlying Internet protocols are swallowing whole other technologies—television, telephony, radio, newspapers and other print media—and becoming a vast international bazaar of commercial transactions. The immediacy of television and radio have been echoed by the development of streaming technologies, which allow audio and video programs to be simulcast on computers in real time. In some cases the Web has been able to replace uses of other technologies, but in all cases it has radically changed the use and perception of other technologies. The Web has become a medium that defies easy description both because it seems to be an amalgamation of all the other media and because it is still in a state of radical development. And there are almost no limits to who can publish and who can receive information: the cost is low and decreasing hourly; technology is allowing better and faster access; and governmental restrictions are very difficult to enforce

The very nature of information has changed. Consider an electronic document that is found at an official government Web site. Is it as valid as a printed original? Or is the printed version just a copy? And something posted to the Internet can be seen by anyone and usually can be copied and perpetuated forever. The Internet has changed the nature of communication, and it will take many years for society to come to terms with all of these implications.

As most people realize, documents are now normally composed on computers. Then they are printed. But it is now possible to quickly distribute an electronic version directly to the audience, without printing, binding and shipping. And, unlike a printed and bound document, the electronic format gives the reader greater control over the document. The reader can decide what parts of the document to print out, if any.

In the case of the Starr report, many readers simply used the search tools built into most Web browsers to get them past the boring stuff into the more prurient parts.

Have You Left No Sense of Decency

While Congress was deciding to release an unfiltered version of the Starr report to the public, the House Commerce Com-mittee was discussing how to block commercial pornography from children using the Internet. Congressman Bobby Rush (D-IL), co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, scolded the other Members sitting at the dais in the hearing room for what he perceived as gross hypocrisy. His words echoed Counsel for the Army Joseph Welch’s plaintive “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” during the McCarthy hearings in an earlier era.

Rush had watched members of Congress authorize the largest distribution of any Internet document for release that same day, an official government document filled with salacious details that were sexually explicit. Later, in an interview, Rush reflected on the jarring disassociation of the actions and the words of his colleagues. “I sincerely believe that the release of the Starr report on the Internet was strictly political. The decision had no sensitivity, no concern, no interest in the impact of the Starr report in particular in its pornographic disclosures on the minds and attitudes and the mental well-being of children.” The referral of the Independent Counsel for impeachment was shocking in its political content and constitutional implications and in the sexual nature of the material it contained. Shocking in that it was freely distributed to such a huge audience despite the concern many members of Congress had about others publishing similarly sexually explicit material.

However, the report referred only to sexual situations that involved the President, and some members of Congress strongly believed that those actions must be discussed as a matter of public record in a public impeachment trial. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL) stated, “This referral belongs to the American people, and they have a right to know its contents. The American people have pa-tiently waited as rumors and speculation have substituted for facts and information. It is time that we move this process ahead, and the public release of the referral will help us embark on that process.”

It shocked the sensibilities of Congressman Rush and others who wondered how a document that detailed sexual acts would be released by the government unfiltered. It did not seem necessary to him for the document, no matter how important, to include such details. It seemed ironic that Congress passed the legislation that would ultimately make it illegal for commercial firms to do exactly what Congress had done.

On most of the government sites, including Thomas, there were no warnings or filtering enabling technology used. Once having made the decision to release the report as received, there could be no editorial comments added. So the report was released unadulterated, so to speak. However, unlike the government sites, most of the media sites included some type of warning or description of the tone of the content. On the other hand, the expectation that there would be sexual content obviously increased the volume and number of viewers.

The Report Heard Around the World Wide Web

Millions of people knew that the Starr report was going to be released and were searching the Web for a copy. Unlike television signals broadcast to everyone, without direct connections, a Web site must be logged into on a one-to-one connection. Although the network protocol that the Web uses to allow for logging on is very efficient, the computers (known as servers when used for the Web) and their connections do have limits to the traffic they can handle.

Sites were pummeled. The Library of Congress, anticipating the huge amount of traffic, set up methods to reduce the likelihood of total meltdown. Media sites also hunkered down for the explosion. “People moved from site to site [in order to see whether a site had the report],” said Lisa Todorovich of the Washingtonpost.com site. A single person can easily visit and revisit a site several times an hour, multiplying the traffic to that site. By getting the report earlier by way of Smith and Dove, sites such as Washingtonpost.com were able to satisfy their viewers and decrease the multiple visits.

Of course, having people download a document is a strain on resources. But it is a good problem for a commercial site, because it means that they are useful to viewers and ultimately get more traffic. The more viewers, the higher the potential for advertising revenue. On the day the Starr report was released, America Online (AOL), which at the time had over sixteen million subscribers, had its biggest day ever. According to AOL’s Kathleen deLaski, AOL had its first 10 million user-hour day. AOL recorded over 800,000 downloads of the report in the first 24 hours. AOL put the report front and center on the screen as soon as a member logged onto the service. This made it easier for those who just wanted to download the report and AOL avoided many unnecessary searches. AOL, Washingtonpost.com and other commercial sources of the Starr report struggled to meet demand. Most of the major media sites on the Internet were tough to get into because of the heavy traffic. However, despite the load, persistent viewers could expect to get their own copy fairly easily and quickly

The usual home page of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Web site was moved to allow for a stripped down Web page that pointed to the former home page and to the Starr report. Another Web server (a computer dedicated to displaying a Web site) was set up just to handle the hundreds of thousands of downloads requested. Once the Library of Congress received the official CD-ROM version it was loaded onto the server. It is likely that the strain of the millions of visitors would have been much worse if the commercial sites hadn’t been there to help.

Fortunately, the system held up under the strain. It was tough going for viewers, but not impossible. The report was out.

A New Player in Town

The next day some of the major newspapers printed the Starr report in their daily editions. The New York Times even published it in book form. While the sales of the book were huge, the volume and speed of the Internet version out-stripped the printed book. The Web was the new guy on the block and had made its presence known. The other media still had greater total penetration, but the Internet was up there with the biggest of them.

It was the “Drudge Report,” an Internet-only news site, which first broke the Monica Lewinsky story that began the impeachment process. The Internet was an integral part of the unfolding of the scandal. With the release of the Starr report, the Internet had shown its huge growth and importance as a news media. The rise in influence of the Internet as a news media contributed to making the Web sites of major media equal partners with their “mother ship.”

The Washington Post newspaper depended on its Internet section, Washingtonpost.com, to get the Starr report. Because James Smith and Laura Dove electronically released the report, Lisa Todorovich had been able to quickly get a copy for The Washington Post. (Todorovich was one of the new Internet-savvy journalists who would not turn down the opportunity to receive information by e-mail.) It was Todorovich’s copy of the Starr report that allowed the editors from the newspaper section to check the document and allow it to be posted to the Internet—and to be printed in the newspaper the following morning. In a sense, the newspaper version played second fiddle to the Web site by trailing in terms of readership and timeliness.

The Washington Post had been a major player in the last impeachment crisis, when it broke the story of President Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate. During this impeachment, it would be the Internet section that would help bring the information to the public. And Newsweek, a magazine produced by the Washington Post Company, had actually been involved in investigating the story that would lead to the Starr report. But this time it would be a much smaller organization that would break the story—on the Internet.

Matt Drudge’s eponymous “Drudge Report” broke the story. Drudge is known for breaking many things: journalistic conventions, rumors, new ground, and—some critics allege—ethics. But Drudge represents the art of what’s possible with the advent of the Web.

The “Drudge Report” exists only in cyberspace and is available for free to everyone with access to the Internet. It is essentially a one-man operation and initially had no outlet through anything but the Web. He didn’t own a press and he didn’t own a radio or television tower. But these days, anyone can set up a Web site cheaply (or for free), and that Web site is instantly viewable by tens of millions.

The speed, the wide coverage, the ease of use, and huge amount of information contained on the Internet has created the opportunity for the death of privacy. This new medium, more than all the others combined, has accelerated the disappearance of secrets. At its core, news is about getting the stories out. Now it is harder and harder to contain a story.

A Brave New World Wide Webbed

There is a theory that civilization drastically changes around the time of major innovations in information technology: the printing press, radio, television, etc. These changes have included the ability to form new types of governing institu-tions, the rapid improvements in the ability to conduct trade, and shifts in every other social interaction.

The release of the Starr report suggests that the Internet has begun to alter our political landscape. The Internet was originally designed to connect computers together to allow remote computing. The success of the personal computer for use in offices for word processing led to a snowballing effect where now 40 percent of American households have computers. Networked together, these computers have created a system much greater than could previously have been imagined. The Starr report’s release is likely to be seen as more historical than its content. The impeachment referral moved the process forward, but it did not move the American public to demand the removal of the President.

The release—as opposed to the report that was released— accomplished much more. It definitively showed that nothing can be kept secret, that nothing can successfully filter information from the public, that government documents are owned by everyone, that everything can be communicated instantly, and that everyone can be a publisher and receiver of information.

Daniel Bennett, a former columnist for National Journal's Cloakroom, is an internet communications developer and writer who drafted the Government Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998. Pam Fielding is a partner at e-adovcates, an Internet Political Consulting firm in Washington, DC.