YouTube.com is typically a Web site for posting crazy stunts, funny jokes or my buddy Gene knocking a 30-foot cherry tree into his neighbor’s yard – all caught on tape.
Look it up: “Gene’s Tree Felling.”
So-called “viral videos” are passed around from friend to friend online as people check out the day’s latest Internet video phenomenon and have a good laugh or share some outrage at the latest shocking news clip.
But, like with any technological advancement, as sure as there will be porn, there will be politicians.
We saw Bill Clinton pointing his finger at Fox News anchor Chris Wallace; we saw David Hasselhoff singing and flying.
And now the election season is bringing out even more.
Sites such as YouTube.com and Google Video are proving to be as much friend as foe to those with political aspirations, and our local senatorial candidates are getting it as good they’re giving.
The campaigns for incumbent Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican challenger Mike McGavick are using the Internet as a tool to get their messages out to their would-be voters. Both candidates’ Web sites feature blogs, podcasts, video updates and online versions of their TV ads.
But both are also beginning to see the dark side of the Internet, where anyone can post virtually anything and targets have little recourse.
Cantwell’s campaign team can only speculate about who posted a negative hit piece on YouTube.com that suggests she’s proverbially in bed with Washington lobbyists and that she has become “part of the problem.”
The video has had more than 100 views – not many, but more than double the views of her own ads on YouTube.com.
“If there’s (false) information or rumors (online), it is more difficult to react because it moves so quickly,” said Charla Newman, a spokeswoman for the Cantwell campaign.
McGavick, meanwhile, probably thought he was doing a good thing on his Web site a few weeks ago by admitting his 13-year-old DUI arrest. The reaction, though, has not been entirely positive. Nearly 500 YouTube.com users have viewed a two-minute clip of KIRO-TV’s news coverage that highlights inaccuracies between McGavick’s account of the incident and what’s in the police report. It’s the first video that appears on a search of McGavick’s name on the site.
McGavick has since apologized again on his own Web site to anyone who may have been misled by his incomplete memory of the incident. The apology has come and gone, but the news clip in which he’s asked to defend himself lives on, getting more hits every day.
“I think it’s very obviously an underhanded way of keeping negative news about your opponent alive,” said Elliott Bundy, a spokesman for the McGavick campaign. “You can post stuff on the Internet that sort of takes on a life of its own.”
The local examples are relatively small potatoes when compared to national-level controversies, such as the one Sen. George Allen, R-Virginia, kicked off when he used a racial slur to describe someone who was videotaping a rally he was holding.
That very tape and news coverage of it landed on YouTube.com and has been viewed by tens of thousands of users online.
And heaven forbid Jon Stewart does something about a politician on “The Daily Show.” Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, discovered what the Internet is really about when he described it on the Senate floor as “a series of tubes.”
Stewart mocked him on his Comedy Central show and the clips hit YouTube.com, drawing hundreds of thousands of hits.
“That’s a perfect example of something that takes on a life of its own,” Bundy said. “And it is usually placed there by an opponent in hopes that it takes on a life of its own.”
So while politicos can use the site, and others like it, to get their messages out, they also need to watch their backs more than ever.
“You do become a little more cautious because technology is very unforgiving,” Newman said. “When you have something (happen), now it can last forever. So one slip-up really becomes a lot more than one slip-up. Or at least it has the potential to.”
Because you never know who’s watching.
You can:
* Submit your own videos, provided they don’t include copyrighted content such as background music or images.
You can’t:
* Post copyrighted material.
* Post “falsehoods or misrepresentations.”
* Post “obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive” material.
* Post advertisements or business solicitations.
* Impersonate another person.
Source: Youtube.com terms and conditions
Columnist Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
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