Free Republic

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...

Yahoo News editor Andrew Golis says star reporter John Cook is quitting to re-join Gawker because "he prefers the license Gawker gave him to add his opinions into his reporting to the scale and credibility Yahoo! News could offer." John tells AOL's Jeff Bercovici that's hogwash. He says he quit Yahoo because they censored him like crazy. Bercovici reports: 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...