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MY COMMENTS TO FOX5 BASED ON MY EARLIER POST

As a viewer who has watched your newscast for over 20 years, I was outraged by the errors in your report on internet hate.

Please apologize on the air for this misguided hit piece on Free Republic (FR) (where I’ve been a long-time poster).

I’m not a hate monger and am sickened to be falsely labeled that way.

You falsely linked FR to death threats against CASA Leader Torres. You falsely grouped FR in with Nazi, Klan, and Skinhead sites.

Why was FR not contacted to give its side of the story? Why did you not mention that CASA Leader Torres was in a long-time dispute with the Minutemen which led him to threaten picketing of the children of Minutemen at school and that Torres had overcome heated local opposition to push through an additional day labor center?

Any death threats to Torres probably came from someone who followed the more heated disputes (i.e., with the local opponents of the last-built labor center and the Minutemen) that pre-date any dispute between Torres and FR.

Or the alleged death threats may have been invented by Torres as a way to smear political opponents or distract from his aborted attempt to threaten school children of Minutemen. Yet, Fox5 rushed to link threats to FR and link FR to real hate sites.

On Feb 22, 2006, the Gazette [http://www.gazette.net/stories/022206/wheanew213954_31988.shtml] quoted Torres’ threat to picket the schools attended by children of Minutemen, a thinly veiled threat likely to get some children attacked in school.

On Feb 24, 2006 a thread [http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1584976/posts] was started about the Gazette article on the dispute between CASA and the Minutemen. Many FReepers (members of FR) were outraged that Torres would threaten children and homes of Minutemen with picketing. Repeating though, any death threats to Torres may have resulted from someone reading the Montgomery Gazette account of his threat to the Minutemen (before it appeared on FR) or from someone involved in the disputed most-recently opened day labor center. Or the death threats may have been invented by Torres as a way to smear political opponents or distract from his aborted attempt to threaten school children of Minutemen.

Relative to Torres’ contact info being on FR, anyone who knows how to use Google can easily find that based on the Gazette article. (Moreover, there is nothing wrong with calling his place of business to protest his threat to picket children.) Therefore, a reader of the original Gazette article, not someone reading it on FR, was just as likely responsible for any threats.

In terms of FR publishing Torres’ photo, your station did the same thing.

FR did nothing wrong here. FR didn’t threaten to picket the schools of political opponent’s children. Incredibly, your source did make such an outrageous threat.

[At the bottom are links to relevant materials documenting what happened.]

Feb 22, 2006 threatens to take actions against the Minutemen including picketing schools that children of Minutemen attend CASA leader Torres said: ‘‘Then we are going to picket their [the Minutemen] houses, and the schools of their kids, and go to their work.” http://www.gazette.net/stories/022206/wheanew213954_31988.shtml

Feb 22, 2006 article about Minuteman hit with laser as he peacefully photographed CASA operation from a distance

http://www.gazette.net/stories/022206/wheanew213956_31989.shtml

March 2006 columnist applauds Torres for being:

[http://www.takoma.com/archives/copy/2006/03/features_talkOfTakoma.html]

[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE]willing to meet bullying in kind. He is training a counter-force of people with video

cameras who are prepared to follow the Minutemen to their own jobs, even their homes. “We will let their neighbors

know who these extremists are,” Gustavo says. “It will be a shame to their families.” [ENDQUOTE FROM ARTICLE]

March 8, 2006 Torres backtracks on threat to picket Minutemen children at schools

http://www. [DON’T WANT TO LINK TO A SITE OF A GROUP THAT THREATENED CHILDREN - didn’t include this bracketed stuff to ch. 5] casademaryland.org/press/mar8-2006(5).htm