Posted on 09/22/2010 8:23:10 PM PDT by kristinn
The Internet giant AOL libeled Free Republic as "hosting child pornography" in an article published Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at their Daily Finance news site. The site's masthead reads: Daily Finance An AOL Money & Finance Site.
Authored by Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici, the article entitled Muzzled Reporter Says 'Maw of Yahoo' No Place for Journalism tells the story about John Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News and returning to his previous gig with Gawker. According to the article, Cook was the senior national affairs reporter for Yahoo's The Upshot news blog. Bercovici notes that he and Cook are friends and former colleagues.
In the article, Bercovici writes that among Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News was that he was not allowed to write about Free Republic:
"But Cook offers a different interpretation of his move, saying that Yahoo's corporate conservatism repeatedly got in the way of his attempts to report the news. In one instance, Cook was forced to bowdlerize a quotation from New York Times reporter James Risen; he was told that referring to masturbation, even euphemistically, was unacceptable. On similar grounds, he was prohibited from writing about the conservative website Free Republic hosting child pornography. Most glaringly, he was told that a proposed story on the Obama Administration raising the salary of White House staffers by 9% lacked the necessary balance; it was killed."
The original paragraph includes a link to a Salon.com article about a scammer creating a user account at Free Republic and posting a link to an alleged child porn site on his home page.(Salon reports it did not directly verify the link.)
The article explicitly exonerates Free Republic of "hosting child pornography" and instead cites the site as being "lax" in its registration process:
"Now FreeRepublic.com is not hosting or even "condoning" child pornography. It's just that it's so ridiculously easy to set up a profile and get your own FreeRepublic page that apparently anyone can and will do it. Theoretically, someone could do this at Kos or OpenSalon. (But, as far as we know, no one has.)"
"...Free Republic appears to delete profiles started for spamming purposes (unless user "freehoodia" was "banned or suspended" for some other reason, like supporting TARP), so, again, all we're accusing it of is being somewhat lax in its moderation of the user registration process."
AOL's Daily Finance presents itself as a professional journalistic enterprise with a full editorial staff overseeing their reporters.
Yet even with a link to the article that flatly refutes AOL's claim that Free Republic hosts child pornography, AOL printed the libel anyway.
Corrective action will be sought.
bump
Having lurked since ‘02 all I can say is if anyone did post anything like that the abuse button be pushed instantly by every person I know here who saw it.
Most of the people pushing that button would also be wishing they could find the guy who did it IRL and explain to them how they feel about pedophiles in a simple and direct way that would leave no room for misunderstanding.
Sue them Jim, and make it as public as possible whether you win or not.
Send lawyers, guns and money...the s*** has hit the fans.
Get a load of this!
“This is on Wiki:”
Went to Wiki to read what they had to say. Lots of hatchets and machetes about FR on there. Wonder what they have to say about libtard websites.
The FR changed massively when Christine O’Donnell won, and for the better. A ton of folks disappeared, the concern troll ruse was over and they knew it. I think perhaps we have some “sore loserman” junk going on here, they no longer hold sway here, constantly telling us to stick with the GOP, so now, they must destory the FR if they can ...
Why AOL? Well, because they have about 12 bucks to their name, a counter suit is not risk at all for them. They know all they have to do is accuse this site of this and now it will be repeated so many times it will become “fact based on a lie”. They knew this was untrue, but it’s worth it from thier end to make the accusation. It is rather ironic as someone stated earlier on this thread that AOL was the place of sicko’s. I remember having nothing to do with AOL for that reason, blocking all AOL email accounts from my inbox because thier network was literally full of sickos.
Is that the new Banana Junior 5000 with Tint Control?!?
(Does anyone else remember Bloom County?)
Dear Jim, do you mind if I call you dad? Congratulations on this windfall that landed in your lap.
I find the timing odd. Have any new posters joined lately that may be posting links to these places from their homepages?
I would be checking this out.
I find it odd this guy stated this as fact instead of an allegation.
Everyone I know who has used and tried to quit AOL over the years - including myself - has me told stories of months and months of continued charges and failure to end billing, resulting in additional unwanted charges for service that was supposed to be discontinued.
AOL certainly appears to me to act like a criminal enterprise.
I hope Jim Thompson sues the crap outta them!....................
Wikipedia is notoriously hard-left liberal and completely unreliable for factual information when it comes to anything political or controversial. They regularly censor conservative attempts to correct the record.
OMGosh,Love your profile page.Sounds like dream place.As for AOL,they insult every freeper that has ever posted.
Maybe not, you know there are a lot of lampoons of the boy president on this site which I am sure the left believes are political pornography.
I'd suggest dismantling it for whatever assets it might have (if they have good servers with decent life left in them, maybe keep those). Cut a deal with another ISP type service to refer the ex-customers for additional cash.
BUMP!
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