Okay, there’s an article in Politico, written by Byron Tau and Kenneth P. Vogel, which appeared on 5am EST on 11/6, 36 hours after the election night results were in.

I’ll cut to the chase: It’s a smear piece.

What Mayday tried to do was grandiose. And we didn’t accomplish what we were hoping for. Then again: it’s easy not to fail when you never try, right?

Lessig and I disagreed on certain strategies of the campaign, of course. We’re two smart, stubborn people with bold ideas - a certain amount of clashing is to be expected - and healthy! So I gave my advice - really playing Devil’s Advocate.

So, yes, there are a great deal of things that Mayday can be criticised on. And to be honest, we need productive criticism. We need to find out how to do things better.

But the article by Tau and Vogel is a smear job. And you can tell because they don’t bother to do the basic journalistic due diligence.

I don’t like waving my degree around like it’s a BFD, but in this case, I am qualified - I have an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas, and while the job market for professional journalists is a bit non-existent these days, I can tell when someone just doesn’t give a damn about journalistic ethics.

Example #1: in the article, Tau and Vogel say: “Several groups allied with Mayday tried to oust [McConnell]”

This is where journalistic habits come in. And I, as a reader, have to ask myself: “Which groups?” “What do you mean by ‘allied?’ - direct coordination? Subsidiary groups? Non-coordination but campaign-finance-reform groups?”

A journalist needs to name his(or her) sources, and be specific where specific information is available.

Example #2: “A PR firm representing Lessig declined requests to make him available. That’s a marked change from earlier, when he and his allies assiduously courted media coverage – to great effect.”

Now, I may be wrong on this, but Lessig doesn’t have a PR firm. Mayday PAC might - I don’t know, I haven’t been an official Mayday staffer since early September.

In either case, “declined requests to make him available” makes it sound like he has gone into seclusion. It was less than 36 hours after the polls closed that the article went up. I’m sorry that he didn’t drop everything to talk to you, but maybe the day after election day, when all his hard work for six months was over and (win or lose) the stress was gone, he wanted to relax with his family. I don’t know, I’m just guessing.

Did Mayday court media coverage? Hell yes. Mayday was running a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign and then a political campaign. But a day of radio silence while Mayday analyzes data is not exactly a media blackout.

Example #3: “The buzz that Burton’s firm helped create for Lessig — but not so much for McKinnon — prompted grumbles from ostensible allies who were irked by Mayday’s headline-grabbing and wondered whether all the attention was helpful to the cause.”

This is the perfect example of bad journalistic practice. This statement is entirely unsourced. It’s also highly improbable. Most of our allies in the campaign finance reform movement tend to be extremely transparent. And I find it difficult to believe that anyone would consider Mayday’s promotional efforts - which brought the issue of campaign financing front-and-center - to be detrimental to the cause. But maybe I’m wrong - and there’s someone out there who wished Mayday didn’t start a SuperPAC. If so, NAME THEM.

I’m serious. You NAME YOUR SOURCES. “Name Your Sources” is the second rule of Journalism 101, right after: “Don’t make shit up” and right before “Make sure you spell their name right.”

Example #4: Some donors and operatives in liberal politics believed he was siphoning off money that could have spent more effectively by existing groups.

Again, no source is named. Just “some donors and operatives.” Who? Tom Steyer? A Reddit commenter who goes by the name “beanfartz”? WHO?

Example #5: “In the close-knit world of advocates seeking to reduce the role of money in politics, movement veterans who had spent decades pushing the cause with much less fanfare questioned his tactics and his savvy – albeit mostly privately.”

Trust me, we’re not that close knit. We know of each other, sure, but I can’t just pick up the phone and get, say Cenk Uygur or Cong. John Sarbanes to drop everything and talk to me. And if we all agreed on our methods, we wouldn’t have separate reform groups. WolfPAC focuses on constituional amendment, Mayday on statutory reform, Counter-PAC on dark money… in short, there are many groups that each make their own decisions.

And if people questioned his tactics and savvy, why not name those people? Or better still, why not produce a quote - a sourced quote! - of someone saying something to that effect.

Example #6: “Asked over the course of the campaign about Lessig’s splashy media coverage, a number of advocates for campaign reform rolled their eyes, but declined to comment for fear of undercutting their collective efforts and also potentially offending Lessig’s donors.”

WHO? Name. Your. Sources.

Additionally, I don’t think anyone in the campaign finance reform group was concerned with potentially offending Lessig’s donors. Mayday’s bulk funds were raised through crowdsourcing - the big donors from the tech industry might be big names, but why would a campaign finance reformer fear offending them? It just doesn’t make any sense.

The one sourced quote was from David Donnelly of Every Voice, but that quote simply said that Every Voice adopted a different strategy than going for media attention. It’s presented as though it’s critical of Mayday, but it’s just an acknowledgement that Mayday and Every Voice have different strategies. Nowhere does Donnelly say - or even imply - that Mayday’s strategy was or is incorrect.

The next quote, which is about Lessig’s voice, is unsourced, or as Tau and Vogel put it: “said one operative.”

Then there’s this quote:

Example 7: “Another reform advocate who has worked with Lessig said “The last thing that the progressive movement needs is another ivory tower egghead trying to play political operative and sucking up valuable donations and resources for his personal vanity project. For the sake of reforming money in politics, I wish Larry Lessig would please stop.”

There’s no source to this quote - which I would imagine would be the keystone of the piece, and the MOST IMPORTANT one to source. But that said - I can’t imagine ANYONE who worked with Lawrence Lessig saying ANYTHING like that.



I can’t prove it. I know I can’t prove it. But as a matter of personal opinion, and even including my pro-Mayday bias, when I look at this article like an editor would - or at least a half-competent Journalism student - I would say that because of the unsourced quotes that the article was unfit for print (nevermind if they’re true or not.)

And I can’t prove it - Lord knows I would if I could - I can’t prove it, but I honestly think that someone Tau and Vogel - or someone else at Politico - is literally making these quotes up. I can’t prove a negative - that nobody, nowhere, said those quotes to Vogel and Tau. I can tell you that the fact that it is unsourced and sounds nothing like what I’d expect to hear from a campaign finance reformer who has worked with Lessig makes me think it’s "a quote too good to be true” - the kind that Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass would come up with.

So, that’s just what I can’t prove.

What I can prove is that items were deliberately taken out of context:

Example 8: “On his blog, where Lessig referred to his operation as “lessig-land”

"Lessig-Land”, in that blog post, referred to the Lessig-Neuefield family, not to Mayday PAC, and is very evident from a cursory reading of the post in question.

Example 9: “Lessig brashly dismissed critics, urging Scott Brown’s lawyers to “make my day””

Lessig did urge Scott Brown’s lawyers to “make my day” and follow through on a legal threat they had made in a cease-and-desist letter telling Mayday to stop referring to Brown, a lobbyist by trade, as a lobbyist. Lessig, by the way, is perhaps one of the most foremost lawyers on copyright and speech law; sending a C&D to Lessig is like sending a Chick Tract to the Pope - it’s not going to convince him, it’s not going to threaten him, and he’s the one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject.

Instead, the way the quote is presented - out of this context - is to make it seem like Lessig was just making bizzare threats.

Let’s make no mistake about it. This piece was not designed to inform. If it did, it would follow some basic journalistic principles. It was designed to kick Mayday when it was down, and did so through a very transparent smear campaign.

If I were the editor of Politico, I would think very long and hard about whether Tau and Vogel were pulling the wool over my eyes.