I disagree on WP ombudsman Howell

[DeepModem Mom]

She was wrong, and the Washington Post is, very often, a disappointment, and clearly not the newspaper it once was. That paper lives in the Beltway bubble, and travels too closely in the same circles as the Bush cabal.

But I'd add my voice to many here who, when they ask for e-mails, faxes, and/or phone calls for some issue or another, ask that people not be abusive. I understand the strength of feelings here -- BELIEVE ME, I DO! We have had it, with the Bush administration, the power grab by the extreme Right and its "Religious" Right enablers, and with a compliant press, and the timid on our side.

But what's more important -- a self-indulgent attack, personal and profane, or a strongly-worded, intelligent, reasoned message that is far more likely to get results, or at least be considered? IMO, when we send messages that can't be printed in a newspaper, we are hurting our own cause, and shooting ourselves squarely in the foot.

[WilliamPitt]

1. More flies with honey

As my mom said.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. And moms, of course, are very often right.

:)

[WilliamPitt]

3. So I've heard

:)

[robbedvoter]

4. True, but they would have found a reason to shut us up anyway

EEt peacefully they put provocateurs among us, and if that fails, they still forbid our next one (to protect the lawn).
Agree about style and effectiveness, just don't buy their pretext.
They'll always shut us up - because...that's their whole agenda.

[hlthe2b]

5. Yes, DM Mom... Yet... reminding DUers of this ...

would seem to suggest the impression that most of those emails were from DUers, or at the very least, that an admonishment against uncivil discourse posted on DU would have an impact on the blogosphere at large.

I'm proud of the role that DU and DUers assume as activists and information sources. But, realistically, we are but a small component of the disinfranchised and increasingly frustrated LW. So, I'm not sure how this civility reminder post has any impact on the issue. It is not as if we are automatically identified with DU when we post opinion posts or emails to outside sites. :shrug:

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Well, if I could speak to those on our side outside DU...

I would, and offer them the same advice, which seems to me practical. Sometimes I just think there's an attitude, here and elsewhere, that since there's a right to say whatever you want, however you want to say it, including profanity and personal attacks, you should do so. And some seem to take pride in it. I just think that, in the end, they hurt themselves, and the rest of us who are interested in maybe getting results.

But you're right, hlthe2b -- the barrage of messages to Ms. Howell could not possibly have been generated here!

[tsuki]

7. I read Skinner's screen shot. It was less profane and attacked

less personally than the majority of Payola Pundits do on a single night of Cable News Network (all of them.)

If asking someone to check their facts and refrain from printing the RNC talking points is a personal attack, then I am guilty as charged.

If saying that the integrity bar for journalists is much too low, then I am guilty.

[Orangepeel]

9. their story is that they were removing individual posts until it got to be

too much.

Whether or not that's true, I don't know.

[tsuki]

13. Their "story" is that Abramoff gave donations to democrats.

Their "story" is that Woodward did nothing wrong reporting and trying to kill the Plame story when he was involved.

Credibility, once lost, is hard to reclaim, but it can be. They need to research and footnote. They need to be able to quote a source other than "they say."

[Orangepeel]

8. I think you are right

I also sympathize with the anger and I understand the point of view that it is sometimes necessary to be shocking in order to capture attention.

But, there is a huge danger of the "story" being about the tone of the message rather than the content of the message when the delivery is "over the top."

[gratuitous]

10. One or two points

As we have seen in countless dust-ups just like this before, the erring person will re-cast the argument as a sin against their august personage by plucking one or two quotes out of thousands they receive, and pretending that everything they received was in the same vein. The New York Times did it over Judith Miller, you'll see it several times a day on the cable shows, and other major news outlets seem to love nothing more than playing the victim for their own slipshod reporting.

Here's a real stunner for our delicate, diaphonous, six-figure salaried perfumed and pompadoured doyens and doyennes of the Fourth Estate: There are trolls in cyberspace, and not everyone uses the most decorous language all the time. Why, some people will employ some of the same words that the Vice President has used on the Senate floor! Shocking, n'est-ce pas?

And who is to say that these "attacks" are "self-indulgent"? After days, weeks, months and in some cases years of politely clearing our throats, with appropriate forelock tugging and foot shuffling, many of us have failed to get even an exasperated sigh from our betters in the posh seats of power. After awhile, it's human nature to lose one's patience, and while I don't care much either for the "Hey mofo! I'm talking to you, this is important" school of cyber-commentary, I can certainly understand where some of those folks are coming from. Just in the last few years, our once-great nation has launched invasions of two third-world nations, killed thousands and thousands of people who never harmed us, never even threatened us, wasted a few thousand of our own citizens' lives, squandered hundreds of billions of dollars, and watched the steady erosion of fairness, equality, justice and freedom in so many spheres of public life.

I don't know about you, but sometimes it makes me wanna holler.

[kevinbgoode]

11. Look. . . there was no excuse for this hack to get the facts WRONG

This is a media professional. . .and this wasn't a story that...oh, was just lying around and being reported for the first time. The entire week, every outlet of the MSM was repeating the same sort of thing Howell originally typed, following the GOP philosophy that if you repeat something often enough, it BECOMES the truth. Sorry, but I expect more from a free press, particularly a media that is supposed to be the "watchdog" for our system of government.

And I don't like the fact that Ms. Howell spent more of her rebuttal whining about the alleged abusive comments than she did explaining why she couldn't put 2 + 2 together - nor did she explain why getting it wrong repeatedly isn't some form of professional obscenity in itself. In fact, she STILL can't quite wrap her mind around the fact that there is a difference between being a client making contributions and the lobbyist himself, or manage to even point out that those donations to Democrats declined when the tribes associated with Abramoff. At the same time, she fails to even point out that the tribes themselves were victims of Abramoff's scheming - a conclusion that seems to be much more easily reached than this "bipartisan" crap.

There is some reason why every national media outlet seemed to relish getting the facts wrong on this scandal last week. And merely saying "hon. . .I think you made a little mistake" apparently doesn't get their attention.

In the journalism profession, there is one thing and one thing only which passes for obscenity - and that is the loss of your credibility.

[ljm2002]

12. I must disagree with you here...

...having read a good portion of the comments that were directed her way. They were pretty mild, by Net standards, and the criticisms that I saw were addressed to her professionally rather than personally -- a valid form of attack in my opinion, given the sadly deficient way she reported the story.

Apparently, seeing the truth printed on their very own pages gave the WaPo editors a case of the vapors. Whatever happened to the hard boiled editors of yore? I guess what we have now is the all-too-familiar assortment of frat-boy, bow-tied, manicured and blow-dried Republican operatives in the editorial offices nowadays.

Bah. Humbug. Let them stew, let them continue trying to hide the truth. The truth will bubble up, in spite of their best efforts to suppress it. The longer it is suppressed, the larger the force with which it will emerge.