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.
You’re right: in the mid 90s, I was new to computers, and AOL was new to the internet, and the chatrooms on AOL were like a test run for what Craigslist was later to become.
I used the name ‘willcerv’ (first four letters of first and last names) in chatrooms ,for the first few months of when I’d even bother to go onto chatrooms, just for the novelty of it, and I’d get IMs from people asking things like “willcerv”......who will you serve?.....then questions like “how are you dressed?”. I’d answer something like
“raspberry vinaigrette”, and they’d say something like, “OH! Yummy!”, then it would be clear to me who I was talking to , and I’d have to end it, saying, “Uhhhh.... I’m not built that way.....Nice ‘doing business’ with you”.
Seems like FR has libeled. AOL is headquartered in VA, right?
5.56mm
Jeez, how did you ever manage to cancel your account with AOL? I was on AOL from my first year with computers,in ‘95. and by ‘99 was thoroughly disgusted with it-—but trying to cancel your subscription put you in touch with one of their
account reps who WOULD NOT LET YOU CANCEL. I finally got SO irritated by one of these people that I threatened to sue.
It took literally FIFTEEN MINUTES of back and forth before she finally ‘heard’ that I wanted to cancel my subscription, and finally relented. The most aggravating thing of its kind I have EVER been through.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot to the trillionth degree!!! >:-(
*I* am a soccer mom with pictures of my children on my profile page—WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PERSON TALKING ABOUT?!?!?>:-(
The hamsters running on those old squeaky wheels are demanding union help! THE HORROR, OH THE HAMSTER MANATEE! :-O
Wiki *is* a “libtard website”—of course they are unbiased in all their ‘articles’.
May a pack of rabid attack dog attorneys be unleashed upon them.
Sue!
To quote an old internet meme.....DOOOOOOOO EEEEEEEEEEET!
And the cat said not I also. lol
Law-abiding citizens aren’t willing to throw their life away to do this kind of crap. It’s just interesting that the other side seems able to find plenty who don’t seem to fear justice. Almost as if they know somebody’s covering for them.
Maybe these places would fear the law if they knew we could get some undercover cops to check out their own sites. Sort of like posing as a prostitute client in order to catch the prostitute or pimps. Can a person get permission from the cops to do undercover work for them?
Any opinions on this?
Giddy-up!
“FR doesn’t host anything but text and html.”
Unless he’s referring to the many pics of Helen Thomas!
“Unless he’s referring to the many pics of Helen Thomas!”
Lol, but even then FR doesn’t host them, they only host the link to the image. The actual file is on someone else’s server somewhere.
ditto
I saw that photo of Katie Couric dancing while drunk too.
Dirty bastards!
Excuse me if this was posted already, but how is simply posting a link in one’s profile page implicating Free Republic of “hosting” anything?
If that’s the case, then I guess FR is “hosting” Paltalk (since on my profile page, I give a link to my profile there).
The depths the leftists will go, to besmirch anyone who disagrees with them is insane. So much for “tolerance”. < /sarc >
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