Slashdot Mirror
Washington Post Shuts Down Blog
Billosaur writes "C|Net has an article by Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times, which indicates that the Washington Post is having to close one of its blogs, due to 'too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.' It seems that Deborah Howell, the newspaper's ombudsman, wrote an article on the Jack Abramoff scandal which elicited a storm of protest and led to readers using profanity and making unprintable comments, which the paper had to take extra care in removing. This was apparently more based on the issue at hand, as the Post's other blogs have not experienced similar problems." What kind of precedent does this set for other mainstream news sites? What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor. Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future?
The "highly inflammatory personal attacks" included virtually NO foul language, and the responses were based on the fact that Ms. Howell perpetuated a Republican talking point (i.e. lie) that Democrats were just as guilty of taking tainted Abramoff money as Republicans. Most of the folks responding were suggesting what can only be the best course of action: Howell should resign, or the Washington Post should can her.
Looks to me like the comments, archived at the URL below, while biting and harsh, were not "hate speech" and had almost zero profanity:/ wapo/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/annapolis/2006/01/d uncans_dough_1.html
What TFA says and the summary misses is that closing the blog is in all likelihood a temporary closing. Jim Brady (the Post's website executive editor) is cited as saying that the barrage of tirades started eating up the time of two people just to keep deleting offensive posts, and that the blog will likely be reopened in the future.
So, what looks like it might be a case of self-censorship due to e-hooliganism is more of a sensible decision to cut the idiots off from their hate outlet and wait until they forget about the Post and focus on someone else instead.
Some people are posting "oh the comments weren't so bad" with a link to whatever used to be posted.
u ssion/2006/01/20/DI2006012000566.html
:)
That's because the comments you see being posted on other sites isn't really what they were concerned about. Of course, most people posting this apparently read DemocraticUnderground, so it's not really worth responding to them, but just in case anyone else falls for it.
Here's a link to discussion with the executive editor of the Post website:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/disc
See in particular:
Pensacola, Fla.: After reading the over 400 of the comments in question, which by the way, were saved by someone before they were removed, I saw no hate speech, one four letter word, and I can't imagine what you found so offensive as to remove them. Could you please explain exactly what problem you had with them?
Jim Brady: You were reading the ones that were posted live. There were a few hundred others that were removed the site altogether, and those would not be on the page you're looking at.
and:
Jim Brady: As I said earlier, that screen shot is only what was live, not what we blocked. There's no way for you to see what we blocked, and you should be happy about that, believe me. I learned some new words this week.
Of course, this is obviously spoken like someone who has never read Slashdot at -1.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I call bullshit: you're conflating contribution sources.
You say "an abramoff bribe", yet from your linked chart:
Here is a detailed look at Abramoff's lobbying, and political contributions from Abramoff, the tribes that hired him, and SunCruz Casinos, since 1999.
I clicked through on the top 20 dems by dollar amount, and NOT ONE got money from Abramhoff, Scanlon, or SunCruz Casinos. I'm sorry, but just because a group hires a lobbyist does not mean that every political contribution from that group is controlled by that lobbyist. I mean, fer chrissakes, there were tribes with gaming operations who were contributing to congressman Harry Reid (D-NV) for obvious reasons (Nevada, hello?). There were also tribes contributing to the congressman representing their district.
Clicking on the top 20 Republicans (or Repub committees) showed lots taking money directly from Abramhoff, Scanlon (his business partner), and SunCruz casinos.
I moderate a debate forum. It could be a full-time job if I let it (rather, if I cared enough about it to bother to strictly enforce the rules.) I deal with this sort of thing on a semi-daily basis. The vast majority of people who post anywhere--blogs, forums, newsgroups, etc--don't know how to engage in a normal conversation. They are so convinced in their rightness that they immediately launch a preemptive verbal attack against any and all who might remotely disagree with them. Instead of simply pointing out that a person is wrong, they feel the need to insult them. I've found that nearly all of these types cannot actually argue their points effectively and hide at the first sign of a challenge. The problem is that people aren't actually posting anything but childish insults. I ban about a dozen people a week from my forum for trolling and repetitive ad hominem. Invariably they whine to me via e-mail that I banned them because I didn't like their ideas and it's censorship and blah blah blah...and they keep on even when I show them specifically which rules they break. People have forgotten how to treat others with respect.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
It was already invented and went commercial six years ago. It was called "ThirdVoice." It was started in 1999. It lasted about a year, ran into a lot of opposition, got into some legal problems and shut down. Webmasters hated it.
While you're at it, you can take a look at the actual numbers, and see that the contributions from the Indian tribes that worked with Abrahmoff to Democrats actually went down once Jack started working with them.
The problem here isn't the commenters. It's people like Howell, and people like yourself, who watch Headline News for thirty seconds and then assume to understand the situation.
While your loose grasp of the facts can be excused, the fact that the Ombudsman for one of the nations largest news providers did no actual research into the issue is a little scary. The fact that they are now quashing dissent on the issue, and that she has now decided not to respond to critics, is downright frightening. She is an Ombudsman... responding to critics is her job.
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, January 15, 2006; B06
The Post's two-year investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings is one of the best and most explosive pieces of investigative journalism this town has seen in a long time.
The story has moved inexorably from Abramoff being a top dog lobbyist to his pleading guilty to scamming Indian tribes and fraudulently buying a Florida-based fleet of gambling ships. With Abramoff's pleas, some members of Congress look as if they are moving swiftly to enact lobbying reform just ahead of the sheriff.
Susan Schmidt, a Post veteran of 23 years, has been the lead reporter since the story began to unfold in the fall of 2003; she was later joined by R. Jeffrey Smith and James V. Grimaldi. Their work has been supervised by editors on the national and investigative desks.
Schmidt is known at The Post for a remarkable ability to dig and develop broad and deep sources from all sides of a story.
A number of Post reporters -- but not Schmidt -- used Abramoff as a source before the scandal. He was often quoted in stories about Republican politics, fundraising, Jewish causes, the Capital Athletic Foundation he founded and his two restaurants. News reports described him as a "confidant" of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and "influential" among conservative lawmakers.
In the fall of 2003, a lobbyist called to tip Schmidt that Abramoff was raking in millions of dollars from Indian tribes to lobby on gambling casinos. Schmidt started checking Federal Election Commission records for Abramoff's campaign contributions. Lobbyists also file forms with Congress that give information on clients and fees.
Schmidt quickly found that Abramoff was getting 10 to 20 times as much from Indian tribes as they had paid other lobbyists. And he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.
"It was enough to get me interested," Schmidt said. She also came across Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay who operated a public relations firm doing business with tribes.
Schmidt called tribal leaders around the country, looking for Indians who had access to information and were suspicious of Abramoff. Her first big story, on Feb. 22, 2004, revealed that Abramoff and Scanlon had taken an eye-popping $45 million-plus in fees from the tribes.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) began a congressional investigation, and the Justice Department started its own probe. Schmidt kept tabs on those, as she had done for six years as the lead reporter on investigations into the Clinton administration, including the Monica Lewinsky case.
One piece of information led to another; Schmidt was often ahead of the investigators. "It was incredibly complicated, an unbelievable, ingenious, enormous web of fragments" around Abramoff's deals, she said. Schmidt had only one interview -- in February 2004 -- with Abramoff. She said he lied about having no financial ties to Scanlon; federal investigators later showed they split fees.
Schmidt asked about the purchase of SunCruz Casinos, a story well known in Florida but not in Washington. "His reaction was so startled, so convulsive, that I knew I was onto something," she said. Schmidt and Grimaldi started looking at Abramoff and his stake in the SunCruz ships that took passengers into international waters to gamble.
Grimaldi and Schmidt spent days in Florida federal courts looking at SunCruz bankruptcy records. Grimaldi came across a bank loan application on which Abramoff listed as references Tony Rudy, then DeLay's deputy chief of staff, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).
"The eureka find was that there were congressional links to this fraudulent casino deal. He had been telling local reporters that he had little to do with SunCruz. Yet the evidence was hiding in plain sight in court records," Grimaldi said.
One of the troves that kept the story expanding was Abramoff's e-mails. He was an inveterate e-mailer, and those e-mails found their way to Schmidt.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Some Indians want to operate casinos. Some Indians already operate casinos, and don't want other Indians to.
Abramoff works the latter.He manages to get one casino attempt blocked, by getting the glorious shining sack of shit Ralph Reed to pull in the sheople who think gambling is a sin. (Reed, of course, claims he was shocked, shocked, that the money from that casino was from gambling. Or something. The bastard is running for Lt. Governor in my state.)
So then that tribe hires him, (Surely without knowing that he got it shut down) to get it back on track, which he does. While he continues to work for the other tribe. This is illegal, and rather unethical.
Meanwhile, these tribes also give money to Republicans and Democrats alike who sit on the committee that is in charge of all this. Like they always have, except, probably at Abramoff's urging, that money flows more towards Republicans than Democrats than it used to.
Over in a completely different universe, Abramoff is bribing Republicans to vote in certain ways. I mean, flat-out, money-under-the-bathroom-stall bribery. These ways are unrelated to gambling, as far as we know, because Abramoff was merely playing both sides off each other and raking in the dough, and didn't actually care who won.
Someone will have to explain to me how Abramoff's bribery can 'backtrack' though his victims, who were giving him money. Because that seems to be the Republican talking point. In reality, the only reason the Indian tribes are involved at all is that he committed a completely seperate crime towards them!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?