[Lnc-business] Publishing links to candidate articles with some platform deviations

[Wes Benedict]

Dear LNC:

I'm bringing this to your attention now, because it has not been an 
issue for several months, but likely will come up again soon given that 
we have lots of candidates and will be writing lots of blog entries 
about candidates this year.

Staff works to publish articles that comply with the LNC Bylaws and 
Policy Manual. The Advertising Publications and Review Committee is 
tasked with ensuring publications comply.

I'd like to point out that I think Staff and the APRC have had a pretty 
good working relationship for at least 3 years and perhaps even longer 
than that if I think about it. So, this is not meant as a complaint in 
general about the APRC, Staff, or the overall procedures. Most things 
are fine in that area, in my opinion. I just want to focus on one issue.

Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that various members of the 
APRC and various staff don't always agree with each other on what 
constitutes a violation.

A particular area of uncertainty has been articles with coverage of 
candidates where the articles include some positions that violate platform.

I'll use public schools as a hypothetical, and the article below from 
the imaginary "Alexandria Beach Times."

====start article====

[Sentence 1] John Doe, Libertarian candidate for Congress, says he wants 
to cut taxes, cut spending, end the war on drugs, and bring our troops 
home from overseas.

[Sentence 2] When asked about public education, John Doe says "I'd like 
to use some of the savings from those cuts to increase spending on 
public schools."

====end article====

I think most of the APRC and Staff would feel it's okay to write a blog 
and to quote Sentence 1 of the article above. Most of the APRC and Staff 
would probably feel it's NOT okay to quote Sentence 2.

The area of likely disagreement is whether or not we could include a 
link to the source article in our blog entry.

If there was an article where 50% or more of the content about the 
Libertarian candidate had platform violations, probably most of us 
wouldn't want to publicize it.

There can be a great article about one of our candidates where 90% of 
the coverage is positive, but if 10% of the article includes a platform 
violation, we maybe should not link to it, or maybe we should.

I used public school spending as an example above, but all kinds of 
things have come up in the past, such as opposing legalization of hard 
drugs (or letting the states decide on that), the Fair Tax, welfare, 
some regulations, and so on.

I would like direction from the LNC on whether or not it is okay to 
publish things like blogs that links with some positions that might 
violate the platform.

Based on feedback, I might float a suggest amendment to the Policy 
Manual for you all to consider at the upcoming LNC meeting.

I can work comfortably with whichever direction the LNC might go on this 
particular issue, but I think it's an important enough issue that has 
come up quite a bit in the past, that it should be considered by the LNC.

If the LNC prefers to leave the decision up to the APRC, that is another 
option I'm comfortable with. In fact, I think that's the status quo 
right now, however, given recent changes in the APRC, I could not tell 
you how they'd rule on the above issue.

Thanks,

-- 
Wes Benedict, Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
(202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict at lp.org
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership