"Let's nuke the bastards."
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.
This is actionable.
Sheesh...!
A lawsuit that results in enough $$ to buy deluxe versions of those new servers or whatever it is that is needed would be nice; that, and an apology.
This is transparently malicious. It wouldn’t take 5 minutes for them to investigate and realize the FR doesn’t host anything but text and html.
“....then they attack you, then you win.”
Mohandas Gandhi
Nail 'em Mr. Robinson.
WOOHOO...time to take the trolls to court!
I hope JR makes Jeff Bercovici prove his allegation in court, and AOL also (where the big money is).
Ironic. AOL chat rooms were notorious hangouts for pedophiles.
LOL... you crack me up. AOL = big money? Really? Hahahaha.
As fast as you could ban one another one posted a nasty pic.
I think this might get you that new bass rig you’ve been wanting. Maybe a whole fleet of ‘em.
“returning to his previous gig with Gawker”
The guy’s only prior experience was writing bon mots about Paris Hilton and Julia Allison party events so he must struggle to actually write articles about real subjects. He is sort of an internet version of Jayson Blair.
Call Liberty Counsel, a national Conservative lawyers’ group Hq in Orlando.
They could file in the Rocket Docket so Kristinn could watch the proceedings. :)
Oddly, I saw a really repulsive porn shot in the last seven days. Repulsive... I dunno what’s going on, but it needs to be dealt with — with prejudice.
I trust Jim and the gang will do so.
SUE THE B*****Ds!!!!
This constant Slander/Libel praticed by the Left HAS to STOP!
Does this mean when we win that we won’t need anymore Freepathons?
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