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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?
Or implement Slashdot like karma so users can moderate each other's comments. Works fairly well. A lot better than trying to have a single moderator.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
They talk about that at WaPo. What you're seeing is the outcome AFTER they spent hours trying to delete the worst stuff as fast as it ws coming in.
I would argue that perceived anonymity is more important than whether it really exists.
People will do some crazy stuff when they think nobody is looking...
For disclosure: I tend to lean leftwards, and most of the time will side with Ds over Rs. With that in mind, this is an example of how trying to go the middle route can leave you with the wrong idea.
Yes, it's true that some of Abramoff's clients (specifically, I'm referring to the Indian tribes involved in the Casino scandal) donated money to Democrats. However, that's neither surprising nor even suspect, although many find it distateful. After all, the tribes are one of the parties which apparently got bilked by Abramaoff.
The issue is that Abramoff seems to have been involved in money-laundering and outright vote-buying schemes. These activities seem to have included Republicans, and only Republicans. And before I'm accused of partisan Republican bashing, reflect for a second on why the dirty parties might all happen to be Republicans in this case:
1. Jack Abramoff is a die-hard, lifelong Republican. Why would he be funneling money to the other side?
2. The Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. Why would you funnel money to someone who can't deliver what you need?
The sad truth of the matter is that the current state of affairs can be traced back to the Congressional ascendency of the Republican Party back in 94. Tom DeLay (you may have heard of him?) then started the "K Street Project," in which lobbyists were pressured to hire Republicans (and only Republicans) if they wanted access to party leaders, and to give money to Republicans (and only Republicans). Since that sort of political patronage is the lifesblood of Washington, it wasn't too long before the Democrats were more or less frozen out of the process.
Anyhoo: The Washington Post actually does have a quick primer on the project up. But for consistantly good reporting on the subject from an honest to god journalist who knows how to keep a good blog, you should check out Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. (Warning: Marshall is pretty obivously anti-Republican, but he's also pretty obviously completely fair in his reporting. Once you get around the sarcasm.)
As I said in my post: they were donations from the tribes to the Democrats. Distasteful maybe, but that's lobbying in Washington these days. Illegal? Definitely not. And this isn't just an ethics issue, this is a straight-up pay for play indictment issue.
Or put differently: Republicans and Democrats both got paid. But Republicans got paid more, and the money they got was gotten illegally. To quote Marshall, whom I referenced above, "to the best of my knowledge no credible claim has been made that any Democrat is even under investigation in the Abramoff scandal, let alone facing potential indictment. At least half a dozen Republicans have been so named in press reports, with varying degrees of specificity."
Are you suggesting that the GOP's largely successful plan to lock in lobbyist jobs and lobbyist dollars to the Republican party is Clinton's fault?
That's a new one.
So far, it doesn't look like there's anything to accuse them off except impropriety. And that's just sleazy, not breaking the law.
Like I said: the Democrats don't have clean hands on this. In fact, near as I can make out, nobody in Washington does. But so far, it looks like no Democrat broke the law with regards to the Abramoff issue, and unless that changes, the insistence that this is a "bipartisan scandal" is best confined to obviously partisan talking heads...
But wait, what am I thinking? You just used the phrase "spin zone."
Yep, it's a bunch of BS. The major newspapers see blogs as a threat because people read blogs. This is just an attack piece on blogs to say that the blogosphere is just filled with a bunch of idiots. What they don't know is that they do this to their own peril. Media outlets that allow participation will thrive and those that do not will go out of business. This is really inevitable.
No Sigs!