Just a few quick notes on Armando’s (most recent) final post: Armando accuses me of failing to apply “basic journalistic principles” because I did not contact him to learn information I already knew – that he did not want people to know about his work. Yet he claims he is exempt from these principles (“I am not a journalist”) even though we are both political bloggers. This claim says everything about the fundamental disagreement at the heart of this debate. I see blogging as journalism. Armando, apparently, does not.

If I did contract work for a company, non-profit, or government agency — work that in any way related to the issues I write about for National Review — and I failed to disclose it, whatever journalist discovered that information and reported it would be well within his rights to do so, and I would be rightly criticized for failing to disclose the conflict. Don’t believe me? That’s exactly what happened to Maggie Gallagher. She was excoriated for failing to tell her readers that she accepted $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services for working on promotional materials for Bush’s marriage initiatives.* She wasn’t paid to promote the initiatives in her columns – only for the contract work she did for the department. Given her track record of endorsing these same ideas throughout her entire career, there was no reason to think that the contract money influenced her journalism in any way. Nevertheless, she was wrong not to disclose. Howard Kurtz was right to call her on it.

Armando thinks he should be exempt from this kind of scrutiny because he blogs pseudonymously. I disagree. I did not post his phone number. I did not post his home address. I did not post any information about his family. I wrote about his work, because as a political writer for the largest blog in the country, I do not think he should be exempt from the rules of full disclosure that govern everyone else in journalism.

His comments about National Review contributors who are practicing attorneys are irrelevant. These individuals write under full bylines. (Jack Dunphy is the only exception I can think of, but he clearly discloses that he is an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department – i.e. his employment information.)

Finally, in his analysis of my follow-up post — in which I declined to re-post links to Armando’s online bios (which listed his full name, employment and affiliation with Daily Kos) out of a desire not to inflame the situation any further – he writes, “Being young, not knowledgeable about the law and law firms, and obviously unscrupulous, Spruell [sic] has been caught. And now he tries to squirm away.”

Actually, I was trying to avoid piling on, which I certainly would have been accused of doing. I see now that I was to be damned either way.

UPDATE: Armando replies that I have not answered his debunking the “absurdity” that he failed to disclose a conflict of interest. If Armando doesn’t think that writing about antitrust issues without informing readers that you represented Wal-Mart in an antitrust case is a failure to disclose, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

* CLARIFICATION: Maggie Gallagher writes:

A small clarification… I wasn’t paid to promote the Bush marriage initiatives. I had an expert consulting contract (not a PR contract) with HHS to draft brochures for HHS clients on the social science evidence on marriage (e.g. “Why Marriage Matters for Your Baby” and also to draft an article for Wade Horn’s signature on the social science evidence that marriage education works.

My apologies, Maggie. But my point remains: It’s clear that Gallagher’s opinions on marriage and family were not influenced by her contract with HHS, but rather that she was hired by HHS because of her expertise in these issues. Nevertheless, if you write about the same issues you are being paid to work on, (i.e. antitrust) you should disclose.