Politicians' accountability extends online

[Commentary] San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced his gubernatorial candidacy via Twitter. Carly Fiorina established her political persona with an unusual series of Internet advertisements. And, of course, President Obama created a much-imitated online donation infrastructure that rivaled his door-to-door outreach. These examples and many more show the increasing importance of the Internet for politicians and their campaigns.

The web has clear benefits for politicians - it's cheap, easy (with the help of an intern or two), and it allows them to interact directly with voters. So as more and more of them scramble to launch Facebook fan pages and plaster their thoughts all over YouTube, it's important for regulators to establish some ground rules about transparency and disclosure. A subcommittee of California's Fair Political Practices Commission has just released a report that recommends requiring similar disclosure treatment for online political communications and traditional political communications. To put it simply: the subcommittee is recommending that paid political advertising online should be subject to the same disclosure regulations as mailers, phone calls, and television commercials.