Washington Post Shuts Down Blog 347
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?
Get the facts... (Score:3, Informative)
The actual comments (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006
Thread continued on another random blog (Score:3, Informative)
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/annapolis/2006/01/d uncans_dough_1.html [washingtonpost.com]
Temporary Closing (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:facts: Dems and GOP are just as bad on this one (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Too Thin-skinned (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Get the facts... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:What we need . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Odd (Score:2, Informative)
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.
ORIGINAL - Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:ORIGINAL - Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff (Score:4, Informative)
Abramoff didn't give ANY money to the Democrats. The entire purpose of the K street project was to freeze out any campaign funds going to the democrats. This is a purely republican scandel & it has the potential to run enough republicans out of congress to move it back into democratic hands. Abramoff has many connections to the republican party & the party apparatus is shitting bricks over this issue.
Again, what had everyone up in arms at the Washington Post was Ms. Howell making accusations that have no basis in fact.
Explaining the tribes (Score:2, Informative)
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!
Re:Get the facts... (Score:3, Informative)
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (House Minority Leader) received $3,000 from Abramoff tribal clients.
- Rep. Charlie Rangel took $36,000 from Abramoff tribal clients (and refuses to return it).
- Senator Max Baucus took almost $19,000 from Abramoff tribal clients (he's now donating tribal colleges in Montana).
- Senator Byron Dorgan (ranking Democrat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which is currently investigating Jack Abramoff) received $67,000 in contributions from Abramoff tribal clients just weeks after supporting legislation favorable to Abramoff clients.(he's returning the money, but refuses to step down from the investigation).
- Rep. Patrick Kennedy took $128,000 in donations from Abramoff clients.
Re:you do *not* know all the comments (Score:3, Informative)
More analysis here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/21/11010/703