Blog Comments Become Fodder For Attack Ads

"In political advertising, you always have to have a source, and that source has to be credible," said Sean T. O'Brien, executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.

Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, a political science professor at the University of Alabama who has written several books on negative television ads, said Hugo's ad "means we have sunk to a new low."

"To me, it is like quoting graffiti off the underside of an underpass and using it in a political ad," she said.

Gary Nordlinger, a Democratic consultant and past chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants ethics committee, said unnamed comments on blogs should be off-limits.

"The AAPC code of ethics says don't run anything misleading, and arguably this could be misleading," Nordlinger said. "All a candidate has in his campaign is his or her own personal credibility, and when you run advertising that can be easily revealed as baseless, the attacking candidate puts their credibility at risk."

But Nordlinger and others say it is inevitable that blogs will increasingly become fodder for television commercials.

In Virginia, blogs have been a mainstay of the political culture, where activists swap gossip and strategies. They have become so influential that political candidates and elected officials often conduct live chats on blogs. Some elected officials even consider bloggers part of the press corps.

Weinberger said the advent of political blogs means partisan researchers are spending more time on them scanning for information about their client's opponent.

Nordlinger said verifiable remarks from candidates on a blog should be fair game for a political ad.

But by using blogs for political ads, several political observers said the public is going to find it even more challenging to judge truthfulness.

"Most people, especially older Americans, are unfamiliar with the blogs," Johnson-Cartee said. "They have no way of testing the veracity of something posted on a blog."