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.
Yep, I found an Islamic site hidden under one of our links..
contacted the moderators and they were on it in a heart beat.
I just hope they spelled our name correctly and posted our url as a HOT link. Let all our NEW readers be the judge.
By the way, got a phone call from some pansy ass liberal the other day complaining about all the violence on FR. I eventually had to hang up on him to get him off the line, but then he starts dialing back every couple of minutes. I’d call that form of harassment “verbal violence.” Not very lady-like at all.
“We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!”
I got yer back, pal.
Not I said the chick. There’s only so much crazy a person can handle.
This is what Cook considers news...
And those were some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. Brrrrrr
Curtis Lu, Time Warner Inc. under investigation. Curtis Lu, Time Warner Inc expected indictment
MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2010 Curtis Lu, Time Warner Inc. under investigation by the SEC, the Department of Justice, the FBI ,the US Patent Office for Criminal Activities Surrounding the Hiding of Details of massive fraud that will Cost the Shareholders of Time Warner Inc. , AOL and Warner Bros. Billions of Dollars.
Formal Official Complainty filed with the Official SEC Complaint
Snips:
. Re: Official Formal Complaint sent by Official SEC Email and Official Email Addresses to Other Investigatory Agencies and Committees addressed herein, Against Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., AOL Inc. and Time Warner, regarding Trillion Dollar alleged fraud on Shareholders; FASB No. 5 and other SEC, accounting violations and Violations of State, Federal and International Laws; Rescissory rights of Shareholders; Evidence and Important Information for the SEC regarding ongoing SEC Investigations of Bernard L. Madoff, Marc S. Dreier, Allen Stanford, Proskauer Rose, Galleon Enron Broadband, Enron, Arthur Andersen, and more.
. AOL, Inc. Chairman and CEO: Tim Armstrong; General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development: Ira Parker; Assistant General Counsel - Patent Litigation, Prosecution, and Licensing: Christopher Day; Executive Escalation Team: Jerry McKinley
I imagine those IP addresses are archived somewhere in FR servers.
That doesn't mean that the WaPo hosted it, does it? It means that somebody is a sick individual who needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
I’ve seen repulsive pics also, but apparently FR is ok with posting Michelle Obama pics, so we’re stuck with them...
Well, I have written about Mohammad’s relationship with Aisha. But that was more about child molestation and not pornographic.
LOL Thanks!
Your memory is not faulty, that Burger King is a few miles from my house.
Scott Ritter is a low life. The cops cut him a confidential deal for his first offense, then they caught him on his own webcam “shaking hands with the sheriff”.
I saw him at the horse track (Saratoga) this summer before the first race. I’m think’in...hmmm, this is a realively uninhibited crowd and they’re drinking...this could get really interesting. Anyway, he was gone before the second race. I didn’t get to see someone pick a fight or get to join in.
SUE ‘EM!
We need more out of work journalists. :)
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