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In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"
Hey, dont mod me down because the washington post likes what I have to say!
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I don't care what he says, there is no value in "First post!" Ironically I _just_ missed the first post.
Can I leave this box empty?
Let me introduce myself. I am the president and founder of the Anti The Washington Post Association. In the text that follows, I will explain why stopping The Washington Post is fundamental to the survival of our society. I assume you already know that The Washington Post has no conscience and therefore no feelings of guilt for wanting to biologically or psychologically engineer wishy-washy opportunists to make them even more dotty than they already are, but I have something more important to tell you. It is my fundamental belief that I, speaking as someone who is not a pestilential, mutinous money-worshipper, want nothing more--or less--than to turn The Washington Post's harebrained circulars to our advantage. To that task I have consecrated my life and I invite you to do likewise. Although The Washington Post markets itself as a high-concept, change-the-world do-gooder, its pleas are eerily similar to those promoted by madmen such as Pol Pot. What's scary, though, is that their extollment of revanchism has been ratcheted up a few notches from anything Pol Pot ever conjured up.
If you ever ask The Washington Post to do something, you can bet that your request will get lost in the shuffle, unaddressed, ignored, and rebuffed. The Washington Post uses antiheroism to let down ladders that the satanic, brutish, and foul-mouthed scramble to climb. That's the large elephant in the room that nobody talks about. Nevertheless, I indeed feel that people really ought to start talking about it because then they'd realize that I have one itsy-bitsy problem with The Washington Post's beliefs. Videlicet, they lay down diktats that force me to have to fight with one hand tied behind my back. And that's saying nothing about how the biggest difference between me and The Washington Post is that The Washington Post wants to conceal information and, occasionally, blatantly lie. I, on the other hand, want to create a world in which negativism, fogyism, and animalism are all but forgotten.
Contrary to the impression that cacodemonic Huns offer "new," "innovative," and "advanced" ideas, there is little new in their perceptions. If you think that this is humorous or exaggerated, you're wrong. If you agree, read on. Did it ever occur to The Washington Post that maybe the time has come to do what comes naturally? Dream on.
Trumpeted so many times, The Washington Post's hastily mounted campaigns have begun to feed on themselves, to generate their own publicity, to cow their opponents not by argument but by sheer repetition, and to present a false image to the world by hiding unpleasant but vitally important realities about The Washington Post's codices. If The Washington Post succeeds in its attempt to perpetuate inaccurate and dangerous beliefs about male-female relationships, it'll have to be over my dead body. There is a format The Washington Post should follow for its next literary endeavor. It involves a topic sentence and supporting facts. Is there a way to counter The Washington Post's insufferable musings? Oh yes, there is a way. It's really quite simple and can be done by any individual. It doesn't cost a thing, monetarily. It requires only time, diligence, and a desire to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by The Washington Post and its little empire.
As I see it, The Washington Post says it's going to make us dependent on wild sectarians for political representation, economic support, social position, and psychological approval sooner than you think. Is it out of its mind? The answer is fairly obvious when you consider that it argues that it's okay to popularize a genre of music whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge mean-spirited troublemakers to turn peaceful gatherings into embarrassing scandals. To maintain this thesis, The Washington Post naturally has had to shovel away a mountain of evidence, which it does by the desperate expedient of claiming that a richly evocative description of a problem automatically implies the correct solution to that problem. The Wa
I am not a cAt...I aM not a caT...i Am n0t a cat!
Comments on online stories would be very different. So many "news" sources are skewed towards their own agendas and income sources, not towards telling the truth as best as they can.
We see plenty of "news" stories on so-called "reputable" sites about malware / botnets etc who "forget" to mention this is an almost 100% exclusive Microsoft issue. Don't they know? If not, the reporters ain't qualified to report the stories, if they do know, why is it being censored in the version that reaches the audience?
Political parties love to "advise" the mainstream media by offering rewards and punishments for spun stories either praising or slandering someone / group and being passed off as "unbiased news". This is especially true at election time; the one time they NEED to get us actively engaged enough to tick their box but not too engaged that we see true the wall of bullshit they are spinning.
This agenda-led or income-led reporting obviously draws comments from people to seek to correct the stories they read by adding facts (intentionally) missed in the report itself.
"He who controls the media, controls the message." - (the name escapes me right now).
Reporters always like to feel their knowledge / word on any subject they do a story on is better than any citizen commentator. It's what keeps them being treated as a special case in regards to how they can harass people for exclusives and claim that hounding someone with cameras / microphones is "in the public interest" and should be defended at all costs. It's how they can embellish parts of stories out of all proportion because it's the juicy part that will make money and still claim to be "exposing the truth".
Most of all they know that many bloggers do just as good a job as they do, without the special status or bias and have to try and ensure that the publics mind still values THEIR version of the story over others. By accepting any input from mere morals, their self perceived Godhood is weakened.
Like many others, their industry is failing, their reputations / trust have been shattered because of corporate / political / religious influence to the extent that many don't believe them. They look to those who are untainted for truth. They see the writing on the wall; they know they are becoming irrelevant.
When people lose faith in the traditional sources of news, ie the ones the mega-corps have bought and paid for to spew their "truth" they bypass it to look outside the mainstream for news. The mega-corps don't like this, so their response is to astroturf. They will employ people (usually indirectly so it can't be easily traced back to the source) to flood blogs, forums etc to spew their propaganda under the guise of "normal people". They will use any and all means to try and discredit dissenters and the site itself hoping to undermine the validity of anything exposed there. The idea is to force people back into trusting only the mainstream news sources.....who are already on message.
The thing they fail to understand is that the internet has changed the rules. Until they do, they will only spend a LOT of money trying to control the uncontrollable while destroying their reputations piece by piece. They may gain the occasional victory, but it will invariably come with a cost in a public backlash and some former customers deciding to start using a competitor instead. By the time they eventually "get it" and evolve, they will be pariahs.
Trust and respect are not things you can buy, they need to be earned. They are won and lost on not only actions, but the intent behind those actions. They are also two way streets.
So not only does a First Post not necessarily deliver information, the same goes for a First Poster.
But, Bush was an idiot. While he presumably did a few things right and a few things which were good for the country, he did a terrible job of letting people know about them. His obsession with secrecy overshadowed any positive impact he may have had.
The first 6 years or so of his Presidency he had the press reporting pretty much whatever he wanted them to, and he still couldn't get anything positive into the press.
If that's not idiocy, I'm really not sure what is.