The Personal Democracy Forum, which examines how "technology and the Internet are changing democracy in America," is currently taking place in New York. On a panel this morning, a McCain rep was spinning the presidential candidates' internet savvy.

From NY Times media reporter Brian Stelter, "McCain's 'net rep: 'You don't necessarily have to know how to use a computer to see how it shapes the country.'"

From Fast Company's Robert Scoble, "John McCain is aware of the Internet." Defense of McCain on stage at #pdf2008 in argument about whether candidate needs to use a computer."

McCain's seemingly out of touch technology habits could continue to be a major talking point for the Obama campaign, as they raise tens of millions on the net, and are met with feeble responses such as today's. Does it matter to you how computer savvy our next president is?

Now that Barack Obama is officially the Democratic Presidential nominee, his campaign is going into overdrive when it comes to image protection.

"One of the challenges that we are confronting very directly is dealing with the rumors and the e-mails, the inaccurate information about Senator Obama and Michelle Obama," senior adviser Anita Dunn told the Times in a story published today, "and we're going to deal with that very aggressively through a number of mediums."

Two of those mediums are magazines and television, as the campaign recently had Michelle Obama on "The View," and in US Weekly.

As we've mentioned before, the Barack Obama campaign has a new spokeswoman, former ABC and CBS correspondent Linda Douglass.

TVNewser's Gail Shister interviewed Douglass last month, and now it's Howard Kurtz's turn. The Washington Post media critic has a story on Douglass, where she insists she'll be a truth telling flack.

"The thing that really made me feel at peace with the decision is this conversation we had about telling the truth," she told Kurtz. "He [Obama] wants me to tell the truth. Coming from a background in journalism as opposed to PR, that was really the thing I wanted to hear."

The Barack Obama campaign launched FighttheSmears.com yesterday, in attempt to catalog and debunk the various myths circulating on the Internet about him and his wife. The site is a great PR move in a number of ways--by launching it, it sends heat back to the McCain camp which in the past has been anti-smear. It also allows fans to crowdsource and publicize the hoaxes themselves by using address book upload functionality common on most social networks.

While there's nearly endless attacking through surrogates still left to do from now till November, this first-mover site adds a nice layer of web2.0 Teflon to the Obamas.

As of the afternoon, there were already over 500 unique articles about Fight the Smears.

The site was of course, immediately Rickrolled, and the MSM fell for it.

Presidential campaigns are expensive. Mitt Romney spent $44 million of his own money to support his unsuccessful campaign.

But Hillary Clinton may have the largest campaign debt in presidential history, and a big chunk of it is owed to PR mega-firm Burson-Marsteller.

According to the Times' Michael Luo:

Some of Mrs. Clinton's largest outstanding bills are to some of her closest advisers, who might be willing to cut her a deal. Mrs. Clinton, for example, owes nearly $5 million to the firm of her former pollster and senior strategist, Mark Penn.

As Luo notes, it is not uncommon for agencies or consultants to cut deals for their biggest or highest profile clients. We'll see if that is the case with Clinton/Penn.

Meanwhile, Penn wrote an op-ed in this Sunday's Times titled, "The Problem Wasn't the Message - It Was the Money," where he wrote, "While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization...that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines."

Answers to that question could easily be written in the length of a book, let alone a blog post, but we'll attempt to do some minor justice here.

The short answer? A big one.

Just yesterday, Bill Clinton told the Huffington Post that writer Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair was a "scumbag," following up with, "...this has been the most rigged press coverage in modern history," in response to a story Purdum penned about his personal affairs and wife's presidential campaign.

This led spokesman, Jay Carson, to release an apology statement on the same day Hillary Clinton (conceded?) the nomination to Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, Minnesota GOP Chairman, Ron Carey claimed on a media conference call, "Barack Obama is still largely unknown, and events like this [last night's speech] will show the real Barack Obama, not the PR machine."

It seems like years ago (it was only two months ago) that Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn quit as Hillary's top strategist. Many claimed his "micro-trends" lost out to Obama's "macro" messages of unity and hope.

Social media news site Mashable takes a closer look at each candidates online strategy, claiming Obama, "placed a PR emphasis on connecting with his base nation-wide, and is considered the young, hip candidate on the Democrat side."

Check out Jon Stewart handily flipping the debate, forcing Scott McClellan to defend the Administration--somewhat. If lying is murder, is obfuscation manslaughter? You make the call:

Part 2 after the jump:

continued...

Former BusinessWeek senior writer, and current freelancer Gary Weiss thinks so. Weiss took a look at the PRSA code of ethics, which includes a statement on honesty.

He says, "I realize that violating the PR ethics code [the way Scott McClellan apparently did] is spitting on the sidewalk compared to the felonies of lying to the American people about Iraq and Katrina...but it seems to me that the PR profession, if it wants to take this code of ethics seriously, needs to take a stand in a high-visibility case like this."

Former Philadelphia Housing Authority PR pro Bob Alotta writes in a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, "The ethical code of the Public Relations Society of America also decries knowingly presenting falsehoods as fact. In the final analysis, McClellan is more culpable than the people he represented. I only hope that no self-respecting organization will hire him as spokesman."

PRSA was not available for comment prior to the time of this post.

Writes Jacque Steinberg in today's NY Times:

When Howard Kurtz invited Kimberly Dozier, the CBS journalist wounded in Iraq, onto his program, "Reliable Sources," on CNN on Sunday, he was not a disinterested interviewer. Mr. Kurtz's wife, Sheri Annis, had been paid to serve as a publicist for Ms. Dozier's memoir, "Breathing the Fire," which Ms. Dozier had come on the program to discuss.

To be fair, Kurtz did mention the connection, adding towards the end of the segment, "I should mention that my wife has done some promotion work for Kim Dozier's book."

TVNewser reports, "Kurtz did say he asked his producers first, who suggested the interview move forward as long as a 'disclaimer' was used."

It is not uncommon for politicians to say the same things over and over again to drive home their messages.

However, it is still somewhat interesting when compiled in a video montage. In this clip from Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle, he joins the press corps bus following Barack Obama through Illinois.

Watch as Obama says Americans are tired of "spin and PR" from their politicians in every single speech on the three day trip.

At one point Riggle asks Athena Jones of NBC News, "Didn't he say a lot of this stuff at the last stop?" To which she responds, "Absolutely."

[FishbowlDC]