The U.S. Federal Election Commission this week reaffirmed that blogs are a type of media and are therefore exempt from the commission’s oversight of federal election financing.

In two separate resolutions on Tuesday the commission announced that online media publications, including blogs, should receive the same protection from FEC jurisdiction as traditional media and that volunteers who maintain political blogs should also be protected. The decisions fall in line with a move by the FEC in March of last year to extend greater freedoms to publishers of online media.

Tuesday’s decisions involved popular liberal blog Daily Kos and a satirical Web site created to help defeat Congresswoman Mary Bono last November.

The complaint against Daily Kos accused the site’s parent company and its operator Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of encouraging the election of Democratic candidates and offering free advertising for candidates through political speech. The author of the complaint, Internet security expert and conservative blogger John C. A. Bambenek, asserted that by engaging in these activities, Mr. Zuniga operates a political committee, which should be registered and subject to FEC rules.

In response to the complaint, the FEC applied a two-part test to Daily Kos. The commission ruled that because the site is a media entity and is not “owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate,” it acts as a “press entity” and is therefore exempt from FEC oversight.

Adam Bonin, the attorney who represented Mr. Zuniga against the complaint, said Tuesday’s decision was the first test of the so-called “media exemption” since the March 2006 amendments to the commission’s rules.

The complaint filed on behalf of Congresswoman Bono argued that because the satirical “Bono blog” was developed by author Michael Grace in consultation with Congresswoman Bono’s electoral opponent, the site could not be considered “independent” of political affiliation. That complaint also asserted that the purchase of a domain name and the operation of blogs on MySpace and Google’s Blogspot were in-kind political contributions.

The FEC in that case ruled that because Blogspot and MySpace are both free services hosted on public-domain sites, Mr. Grace did not make any expenditures. The commission added that even if Mr. Grace had paid to create or host his blogs, his activities would be outside of the FEC’s purview, since the type of blogging conducted by Mr. Grace was “exactly the type of Internet activity” protected under the “volunteer exemption” added to the FEC’s updated regulations last year.