Backgrounder: Paul Mirengoff

By Elizabeth Tsai

Paul Mirengoff. Photo: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP.

Paul Mirengoff isn't a journalist, but he plays one on the Web: a Bethesda, Maryland-based lawyer who handles labor and employment-law cases for the Washington, D.C. firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, he is better known, in media circles, as the "citizen journalist" whose blogging, at the conservative political blog Power Line, sparked one of the most talked-about news controversies in recent years.

A graduate of Stanford Law School, Mirengoff was on the staff of the Stanford Law Review. The 56-year-old lawyer has also published in The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, and FrontPage Magazine. However, his best-known writing appears on Power Line.

After Mirengoff became a fellow at the conservative think-tank, the Claremont Institute, in Claremont, California, he joined two other fellows, John Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson, in May, 2002 to express their views on current affairs on Power Line. Mirengoff originally wrote under the nom de plume "Deacon." In an interview with Norman Geras, a professor at the University of Manchester, he recalled, "In 2002, my college debate partner John Hinderaker asked me to blog at Power Line. Once I figured out what he was talking about, I realized that blogging would be too much fun not to do [it]."

It wasn't until September, 2004, however, that Power Line gained nationwide attention for its posts about the debate surrounding the sources behind a CBS news story by Dan Rather. The story questioned President George W. Bush's participation in the Texas National Guard with memos allegedly belonging to the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, who was President Bush's commander in the early 1970s. The documents criticized President Bush for his quality of service and going AWOL, and they backed the accusation that he did not meet the standards required by the Texas Air National Guard. They were also used to suggest that he received preferential treatment the Vietnam War. Power Line, along with other conservative blogs, questioned the authenticity of the four memos. Power Line was the first to suspect that the typefaces and spacing on the documents supposedly created by typewriters of the 1970s indicated that the memos were actually produced by a computer.

After an internal investigation by CBS, the station publicly admitted that Rather's story was based on forged documents, submitted by an anonymous source. "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather said. “It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism,” he said.

"We don't shield anybody." —Paul Mirengoff

As a result, Power Line landed in the national media spotlight; in 2004, Time Magazine awarded it the Blog of the Year award.

The comments and opinions that Mirengoff posts on the site are clear and concise, with a humorous edge. Recently, he posted a comment regarding New York Times reporter Judith Miller's testimony after she had served three months in jail to protect the sources who mentioned to her the name of a covert CIA employee. "Miller’s account is interesting, but it falls short of explaining what all the fuss was about," he said. The whole situation struck him, wrote Mirenoff, "as a low-comedy conclusion to a low-comedy investigation."

In a panel discussion on blogging and the media with Mark Tapscott, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, Mirengoff said that the mainstream media has "no real relationship with its audience — they still just want to just tell you how it is. Their attitude will prevent them from getting close to their audience." He further explained that Power Line doesn't have this problem because it stays connected to its audience through e-mail. In his opinion, then the bloggers' attitude toward their audience is different than the mainstream media's: "Bloggers listen."

When Mirengoff sat down for an interview with Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor of Fox News, he said that Power Line's writers are committed to expressing their opinions without being constrained and without being bought for anyone else's agenda. Mirengoff asserted that Power Line is not influenced by partisan contributions that would sway the content of the site. At most the site is only run by modest advertising revenue. He said, "We're not out to destroy anybody. We try to be about ideas, and we call [things] as we see them. And because we're not funded we have the freedom to do that."

In the last analysis, he claimed, Power Line broadcasts "a lot of opining—hopefully…not bloviating—along conservative lines."

The site is conservative, he readily admits, "but we don't shield anybody."

Elizabeth Tsai is a senior at NYU, majoring in print journalism.

SOURCES

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP. Oct. 15, 2005. http://akingump.com/attorney.cfm?attorney_id=1209

Eberhart, Dave. "How the Blogs Torpedoed Dan Rather." NewsMax.com. Jan. 31, 2005. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/28/172943.shtml

Paul Mirengoff. June 24, 2005. normblog: The weblog of Norman Geras. Oct. 15, 2005. http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/06/the_normblog_pr_3.html

Lipscomb, Thomas. "Critical memos on Bush's Guard service faked?" Chicago Sun-Times. Sept. 10, 2004: 30.

Paul Mirengoff. Oct. 8, 2005. Wikipedia. Oct. 15, 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirengoff

We Don't Shield Anybody. Oct. 6, 2005. Johnny Dollar's Place. Oct. 15, 2005. http://homepage.mac.com/mkoldys/iblog/C168863457/E20051005203756/

Backgrounder: Paul Mirengoff

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