Yet Another Panel on Internet Ethics!

The Washington Post is running a panel on internet ethics!

Panel: Ethics & Interactivity Jim Brady, Jeff Jarvis, Jane Hamsher, Jay Rosen, Glenn Reynolds

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; 1:00 PM: Last Thursday, washingtonpost.com turned off the reader comments feature on post.blog... after several comments containing personal attacks, profanity and hate speech were posted on an item about Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell's recent column about the Abramoff scandal.... To open the discourse about how reader-submitted comments should be handled, washingtonpost.com has invited several prominent bloggers to join us... to discuss the evolving nature of Internet commentary and ethics.

I have a question for Mr Brady:

I have read David Rosenbaum's big April 2002 front-page New York Times article about Jack Abramoff: "[Abramoff] is, by his own description, a committed ideologue.... tries hard to persuade his fellow Washington lobbyists to give more generously to the Republican Party... expects to raise as much as $5 million this year..." And I have read Susan Schmidt's first article written 22 months later--the one that David Leen says broke the Abramoff scandal--"Under Abramoff's guidance, the four tribes... have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated.... The payday for the GOP is small though, compared with the $15.1 million the tribes have paid Abramoff and his law firm..."

Why in the Holy Name of the Lord would anybody think it is appropriate to characterize this--as Deborah Howell continues to characterize it--as "[Abramoff] directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties"? What even semi-rational thought process could lead anyone to think that Howell's is a fair characterization of Schmidt's "loosened... ties to the Democratic Party" and of Rosenbaum's "committed ideologue.... tries hard to persuade... [others] to give more generously to the Republican Party... expects to raise as much as $5 million"?

Thus my question for Mr. Brady: what does he believe is the appropriate role of readers when confronted by someone like Deborah Howell who appears to have taken leave of her senses and abandoned the reality-based community? Should we write letters to the ombudsman?

We'll see if the Post views this question as adding to the discourse.

:-)

Comments

[Movie Guy]

I believe it would be adequate for Mr. Brady, WaPo publisher, to simply respond to you with an email one liner - "Touche".

As you are the first official recipient of the Deborah Howell Award for Journalism Inaccuracy, I am confident that until new standards are in your blog posts, such a one liner response would be more than adequate. :-)

Clarification and Award Ceremony:

Clown Show Cage Match: Brad DeLong and Daniel Drezner (Yet Another Why Oh Why Can't We Have Better Blog Posts? Brad DeLong Edition)

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/daniel_drezner_.html#comment-13296973

WRT:

January 24, 2006
Daniel Drezner Intervenes Intellectually Outside His Home Area of Expertise

[Palolo lolo]

I just left your question on the WaPo blog for the discussion today

[Seth Gordon]

Perhaps some bloggers could host a conference on ethics in print journalism.

[sglover]

At the risk of sounding like a suck-up (if it's really possible to be a suck-up, here):

Movie_guy, your post is clever and good for a chuckle, but ya gotta admit, when Drezner came up with his riposte, DeLong was quick to acknowledge the point. It was a much quicker and more cogent response than anything we see from Post or NYT management, when they get called on their fuck-ups.

[Matt]

I live in the DC area (in the quaint little town of Bethesda-beside-the-Beltway), and I gotta say, the Post is just an odd bird.

Tremendous institutional pride, often justified, combined with an ingrained way of just missing the highest level. I don't know why-- it appears to be some idiosyncratic combination of stubborness and inattention. Of course the Post should have an ombudsman. But how in the world did the ombudsman's opinions become an issue?

[Cranky Observer]

> Of course the Post should have an ombudsman.
> But how in the world did the ombudsman's
> opinions become an issue?

I think that was made fairly clear in the Froomkin flap: the WaPo's owners and/or senior managers are terrified of offending the current Administration and the Radical Right in general. They have bought 100.1% into the "liberal media" frame and the fear of having access cut off (see how effectively W is doing this to _Republican_ Senators on the Katrina committee?). Howell was brought in specifically to address Radical, and only Radical, complaints, and to punish any reporter/columnist who gives the appearance of being "liberal".

So she is doing her job.

Cranky

[Dubblblind]

"the WaPo's owners and/or senior managers are terrified of offending the current Administration and the Radical Right in general."

The radical right blogosphere is where most of the personal attacks, profanity and hate speech occurs, does it not? So would the Post's position be then that it is OK when it comes from the right?

[elliottg]

Cranky, did you see that the WaPo deemed your comments too offensive and deleted them in the restored thread?

[Emma Anne]

Brad's question is a better version of my question: What *are* readers supposed to do when the paper makes major factual errors and refuses to correct them? If emailing the omsbudman or posting to the website are the wrong remedies, what is the right remedy?

[Movie Guy]

sglover,

I agree.

It was only fitting, though, that Brad receive the first Deborah Howell award.

I'm confident that Brad will continue his campaign to seek accuracy in journalism. I wish him every success.

[Cranky Observer]

> Cranky, did you see that the WaPo deemed
> your comments too offensive and deleted them
> in the restored thread?

Hadn't seen that! Heh.

Cranky

[Auros]

An additional question: Even though "[t]he payday for the GOP [was] small ... compared with the $15.1 million the tribes have paid Abramoff and his law firm," doesn't it seem likely that GOP members of Congress benefitted from some non-trivial portion of that $15.1M? They got taken on "fact-finding" junkets, were treated to free dinners at an Abramoff-owned restaurant, etc... All of these were, presumably, expenses to Abramoff and/or his firm.

[Auros]

BTW, Movie Guy, should the Howell award perhaps be for "Misaccuracy in Journamalism", or something along those lines? You want it to be in keeping with the era of Truthiness in which we live, right?

[Auros]

Also, I have to say, while his response on this particular issue (the Drezner tiff) was rather small compared to what he usually asks his targets for, you can hardly compare Brad, known for his "Brad DeLong Smackdown Watch" posts, to the stonewalling of Howell and Brady. And Howell and Brady occupy a much more important media perch, where they SHOULD be held to higher standards than a blogger -- even a "top 10" econ/politics blogger.

[Robert Waldmann]

Over at the discussion of which this is a meta discussion Glenn Reynolds pretends not to know the law when trying to explain why he doesn't allow comments.

Washington, D.C.: Hi, my question is for Glenn and then maybe Jane would like to comment.

Why is it that most of the high traffic right-wing blogs don't take comments, while most of the left-wing blogs do?

[snip]

Glenn Reynolds: [snip] And unmoderated comments raise a risk of the kind of thing I mention above, as well as possible libel and copyright issues. [snip]

Now the word "issues" is deliberately vague, but Reynolds is clearly trying to trick naive readers into thinking that, if he allowed comments, he would risk liability for libel or copyright infringement. Of course he would have no such liability
as explained by Brad's Best Man http://tinyurl.com/b45lz.

I tried to comment on this in the discussion but missed the deadline (did comment at my blog). Why does Reynolds feel the need to deceive when discussing the response to Howell's error ?

[Cranky Observer]

> Glenn Reynolds: [snip] And unmoderated
> comments raise a risk of the kind of thing I
> mention above,

What Reynolds had mentioned earlier was the possibility that comments on his site would be attributed to him.

The funny thing is, this does happen: people are attacked and demonized based on public comments on their blogs. Funny thing is, it is generally the RADICAL RIGHT that does this, in particular attributing to Markos things comments and diaries posted on DailyKos. Not to mention the MoveOn video flap. I have seldom if ever seen anyone on teh Democratic side do this.

Cranky

[Ginger Yellow]

The weird thing is, in the UK bloggers (and newspapers) do face exactly that risk. And of course libel cases are much easier to win in Britain. And yet the Guardian (and probably other papers) runs a lightly moderated web forum that receives thousands of posts a day and features lots of profanity and "personal attacks" on Guardian writers. Posts that are identified as libellous or offensive will in theory be deleted, but in practice almost everything stands unless someone actually complains. As an example, see this, er, lively thread in response to an idiotic piece the paper published on Saturday (courtesy of Pandagon, by the way): http://tinyurl.com/cspvr

This freedom of expression may have something to do with the fact that despite being one of the UK's smallest national newspapers it has the biggest online readership of all. The Guardian's podcast is the single most popular podcast on the entire internet. Now, I'm not expecting the WaPo to do the same thing - Guardian readers expect to see swearing regularly and uncensored in their newspaper, for example, so there's a big culture change. But the fact that they can run such a lightly moderated forum in an extremely libel friendly country, and that they are willing to leave up a thread with hundreds of posts trashing a column and its author in distinctly "uncivil" terms, without the sky falling down, speaks volumes.

As for Brad's question, they didn't post it, but they did post a similarly worded one from someone else. Brady's response was far from satisfactory. The whole discussion was disappointing, although that was hardly unexpected - Jarvis was far more interesting (and had a far better grasp of the issues) than Brady, despite not being in a position to speak for the WaPo, while Jane's questions were frequently ignored.

[Ginger Yellow]

"Brad's question is a better version of my question: What *are* readers supposed to do when the paper makes major factual errors and refuses to correct them? If emailing the omsbudman or posting to the website are the wrong remedies, what is the right remedy?"

Surely the question here is what are readers supposed to do when, responding to complaints about a mistake, the ombudsman makes mistakes and refuses to correct them? Since nobody is ombudsmanning the ombudsman, what else can they do but write angry e-mails?

[Cranky Observer]

Jane over at Firedoglake confirms what we have suspected: that the WaPo's "live" online chats are heavily edited, and that the editors use a heavy hand to force through their viewpoint.

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2006_01_22_firedoglake_archive.html#113822077578730906

Cranky

PS Doesn't the a tag work in these comments?

[Auros]

No, Cranky, the A tag doesn't work. Brad kills all markup. Given the complexity of modern HTML, where JavaScript can be insinuated with things like "OnMouseOver" events, I understand why he does. It's POSSIBLE to resist the bots while permitting some markup, but killing it all takes a lot less effort

[Robert Waldmann]

dear Cranky

If Reynolds had stopped typing at the point where you stop quoting, I would not have objected. However he added ", as well as possible libel and copyright issues." This was, I think dishonest as he certainly knows and neglected to mention that such issues do not include legal liability.

I don't want to start a mini flame out, so I won't mention anyone else who has recently contested the interpretation of a simple quote, by noting that it is not a correct interpretation of something else the author wrote.

Your point about the move on ad is excellent. This is exactly what Reynolds was complaining about. It was huge compared to all comments about a blog comments ever made and it proves that his claim that asymmetric comments policy follows unfair treatment of righties is nonsense. Excellent point.

I have seen rather harsh criticism of Johnson for failure to delete comments (for example in the little green footballs vs late german fascism game featured at this very site).

[RonK, Seattle]

**Ahem!** Why would anybody characterize this as "[Abramoff] directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties"?

Um ... possibly because it's true, in spades, and beyond the scope of reasonable controversy.

See this by DHinMI, and my two linked posts, and debate in comments subordinate to each.
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/01/republican_felo.html

Disclaimer: this is no defense of Howell and/or Brady, who have much to atone for.

[Robert Waldmann]

Sorry cranky, I was being cranky, paranoid and self centered. I now realise that by pure coincidence we both quoted Reynolds in successive comments. You weren't commenting on my quote and my accusation. You probably don't even care what I type (sob). Silly of me.

[Cranky Observer]

Robert,
No problem - your response just made me a bit crankier ;-)

Cranky Observer