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?
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
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.
Nobody disagrees on that.
What Abramoff has done is EXPLICITLY trade favors for contributions. For that, he has dealt EXCLUSIVELY with Republicans (and not a SINGLE Democrat has EVER received any money from Abramoff). Not only did he give money directly, he DIRECTED casinos to give money to specific REPUBLICAN congressmen.
There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE whatsoever that Abramoff directed ANY money to Democrats. The casinos were giving money to Democrats (and Republicans) LONG before Abramoff came along and they continued to give. In fact, after Abramoff cam along, casinos REDUCED their givings to Democrats.
How could anyone accuse Democrats of receiving money from Abramoff is beyond me.
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